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MARGARET SANGER

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Margaret Sanger

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MARGARET
SANGER

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?An <iAutobiography

new york W-W-NORTON 6f COMPANY publishers

Copyright, 1938, by

W. W. Norton & Company, Inc.

70 Fifth Avenue, New York

First Edition

PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
FOR THE PUBLISHERS BY THE VAIL-BALLOU PRESS

TO ALL THE PIONEERS
OF NEW AND BETTER WORLDS TO COME

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

My thanks are due especially to Rackham Holt for her discerning aid
in organizing material and for her untiring and inspired advice dur-
ing the preparation of this book; as well as to Walter S. Hayward
whose able assistance has helped to make the task lighter.

In the course of preparing this narrative many books have been
consulted. I trust their authors zvill agree with me that a bibliography
in a personal history is cumbersome and accept a general but none the
less grateful acknowledgment.

My admiration has always gone out to the person who can put him-
self in print and set down for historical purposes an exact record of
his honest feelings and thoughts, even though they may seem to re-
flect upon many of his friends and helpers. I have not in this story
hurt any one by intent. Because its thread has, of necessity, followed
dramatic highlights, many people who played prominent parts have
not been mentioned. These I have not forgotten, nor those numerous
others who made smaller offerings. Some have pioneered in their
special fields and localities; seme have given generously and unfail-
ingly of their financial help; some have volunteered in full measure
their time and efforts as officers and Committee members; some have
fought and labored by my side throughout the years; some have
stepped in for only a brief but significant role. Although on the out-
skirts of the army, it is to these last as well as to those in the vanguard
that the advance has been made. And particularly do I zuish to thank
those co-workers and members of the various staffs whose contribu-
tions can in no way be measured by tlieir duties, and whose indefati-
gable, loyal devotion Jias been a bulwark of strength to me at all times.

5

6 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

It has been impossible to carry out my sincere desire to give per-
sonal and individual recognition and expression of gratitude to all.
Neither a history of the birth control movement nor the part I have
taken in it could be complete, hozvever, did I not pay tribute to the
integrity, valiance, courage, and clarity of vision of the men and
women who, year after year, maintained their principles, and never
swerved from them in a cause which belongs to all of us.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

I. FROM WHICH I SPRING 1 1

II. . BLIND GERMS OF DAYS TO BE 2\

IJI. BOOKS ARE THE COMPASSES 33

IV. DARKNESS THERE AND NOTHING MORE 46

V. CORALS TO CUT LIFE UPON 58

VI. FANATICS OF THEIR PURE IDEALS 68

VII. THE TURBID EBB AND FLOW OF MISERY 86

VIII. I HAVE PROMISES TO KEEP 93

IX. THE WOMAN REBEL I06

X. WE SPEAK THE SAME GOOD TONGUE 121

XI. HAVELOCK ELLIS 1 33

XII. STORK OVER HOLLAND 1 42

XIII. THE PEASANTS ARE KINGS 153

XIV. O, TO BE IN ENGLAND 1 69
XV. HIGH HANGS THE GAUNTLET 179

XVI. HEAR ME FOR MY CAUSE 1 92

XVII. FAITH I HAVE BEEN A TRUANT IN THE LAW 2IO

XVIII. LEAN HUNGER AND GREEN THIRST 224

XIX. THIS PRISON WHERE I LIVE 238

XX. A STOUT HEART TO A STEEP HILL 25 1

XXI. THUS TO REVISIT 268

XXII. DO YE HEAR THE CHILDREN WEEPING? 280

XXIII. IN TIME WE CAN ONLY BEGIN 292

7

8 table of contexts

xxiv. laws were like cobwebs 306

xxv. alien" stars arise 316

xxvi. the east is blossoming 327

xxvii. ancients of the earth 337

xxviii. the world is much the same everywhere 349

xxix. while the doctors consult 358

xxx. now is the time for converse 369

xxxi. great heights are hazardous 376

xxxii. change is hopefully begun 392

xxxiii. old father antic, the law 398

xxxiv. senators, be not affrighted 413

xxxv. a past which is goxn'e forever 43 1

xxxvi. faith is a fine invention 447

xxxvit. who can take a dream for truth? 461

xxxviii. depth but not tumult 478

xxxix. slow grows the splendid pattern 493

index 497

MARGARET SANGER

Chapter One

FROM WHICH I SPRING

"'Where shall I begin, please your Majesty?' he asked. 'Begin
at the beginning,' the King said, very gravely, 'and go on till you
come to the end: then stop.'"

LEWIS CARROLL

THE streets of Corning, New York, where I was born, climb
.right up from the Chemung River, which cuts the town in
two ; the people who live there have floppy knees from going up and
down. When I was a little girl the oaks and the pines met the stone
walks at the top of the hill, and there in the woods my father built
his house, hoping mother's "congestion of the lungs" would be
helped if she could breathe the pure, balsam-laden air.

My mother, Anne Purcell, always had a cough, and when she
braced herself against the wall the conversation, which was forever
echoing from room to room, had to stop until she recovered. She was
slender and straight as an arrow, with head well set on sloping shoul-
ders, black, wavy hair, skin white and spotless, and with wide-apart
eyes, gray-green, flecked with amber. Her family had been Irish as
far back as she could trace; the strain of the Norman conquerors had
run true throughout the generations, and may have accounted for her
unfaltering courage.

Mother's sensitivity to beauty found some of its expression in
flowers. We had no money with which to buy them, and she had no
time to grow them, but the woods and fields were our garden. I can
never remember sitting at a table not brightened with, blossoms ; from
the first spring arbutus io the last goldenrod of autumn we had an
abundance.

Although this was the Victorian Age, our home was almost free

ii

12 MARGARET SANGER

from Victorianism. Father himself had made our furniture. He had
even cut and polished the slab of the big "marble-topped table," as it
was always called. Only in the spare room stood a piece bought at
a store — a varnished washstand. The things you made yourself were
not considered quite good enough for guests. Sometimes father's
visitors were doctors, teachers, or perhaps the village priest, but
mostly they were the artisans of the community — cabinet makers,
masons, carpenters who admired his ideas as well as shared his pas-
sion for hunting. In between tramping the woods and talking they
had helped to frame and roof the house, working after hours to do
this.

Father, Michael Hennessy Higgins, born in Ireland, was a non-
conformist through and through. All other men had beards or mus-
taches— not lie. His bright red mane, worn much too long accord-
ing to the family, swept back from his massive brow ; he would not
clip it short as most fathers did. Actually it suited his finely-modeled
head. He was nearly six feet tall and hard-muscled; his keen blue
eyes were set off by pinkish, freckled skin. Homily and humor rip-
pled unceasingly from his generous mouth in a brogue which he
never lost. The jokes with which he punctuated every story were
picked up, retold, and scattered about. When I was little they were
beyond me, but I could hear my elders laughing.

The scar on father's forehead was his badge of war service. When
Lincoln had called for volunteers against the rebellious South, he
had taken his only possessions, a gold watch inherited from his
grandfather and his own father's legacy of three hundred dollars,
and had run away from his home in Canada to enlist. But he had
been told he was not old enough, and was obliged to wait impa-
tiently a year and a half until, on his fifteenth birthday, he had joined
the Twelfth New York Volunteer Cavalry as a drummer boy.

One of father's adventures had been the capture of a Confederate
captain on a fine mule, the latter being counted the more valuable
acquisition to the regiment. We were brought up in the tradition
that he had been one of three men selected by Sherman for brav-
ery. That made us very proud of him. Better not start anything with
father; he could beat anybody! But he himself had been appalled by
the brutalities of war; never thereafter was he interested in fighting,

FROM WHICH I SPRING 1 3

unless perhaps his Irish sportsmanship cropped out when two well-
matched dogs were set against each other.

Immediately upon leaving the Army father had studied anatomy,
medicine, and phrenology, but these had been merely for perfecting
his skill in modeling. He made his living by chiseling angels and
saints out of huge blocks of white marble or gray granite for tomb-
stones in cemeteries/He was a philosopher., a rebel, and an artist,
none of which was calculated to produce wealth.jOur existence was
like that ofy any artist's family — chickens today and feathers to-
morrow. ' i

"Christmases were on the poverty line. If any of us needed a new
winter overcoat or pair of overshoes, these constituted our presents.
I was the youngest of six, but after me others kept coming until we
were eleven. Our dolls were babies — living, wriggling bodies to bathe
and dress instead of lifeless faces that never cried or slept. A pine
beside the door was our Christmas tree. Father liked us to use natu-
ral things and we had to rely upon ingenuity rather than the village
stores, so we decorated it with white popcorn and red cranberries
which we strung ourselves. Our most valuable gift was that of im-
agination.

We had little time for recreation. School was five miles away and
we had to walk back and forth twice a day as well as perform house-
hold duties. The boys milked the cow, tended the chickens, and took
care of Tom, the old white horse which pulled our sleigh up and
down the hill. The girls helped put the younger children to bed,
molded clothes, set the table, cleaned the vegetables, and washed the
dishes. We accepted all this with no sense of deprivation or aggrieve-
merit, being, if anything, proud of sharing responsibility.

And we made the most of our vacations. There were so many of
us that we did not have to depend upon outsiders, and Saturday after-
noons used to put on plays by ourselves in the barn. Ordinarily we
were shy about displaying emotions; we looked upon tears and temper
in other homes with shocked amazement as signs of ill-breeding.
Play-acting, however, was something else again. Here we could
find outlet for histrionic talent and win admiration instead of lifted
eyebrows. I rather fancied myself as an actress, and often mimicked
some of the local characters, to the apparent pleasure of my limited

14 MARGARET SANGER

audience of family and neighbors. It was not long before I slipped
into declaiming. The Lady of Lyons was one of my specialties :

This is thy palace, where the perfumed light
Steals through the mist of alabaster lamps,
And every air is heavy with the sighs
Of orange groves, and music from the sweet lutes
And murmurs of low fountains, that gush forth
F the midst of roses !

All outdoors was our playground, but I was not conscious at the
time of my love for the country. Things in childhood change per-
spective. What was taken for granted then assumes great significance
in later life. I knew how the oak tree grew and where the white and
yellow violets could be found, and with a slight feeling of superiority
I showed and expounded these mysteries to town children. Not until
pavements were my paths did I realize how much a part of me the
country was, and how I missed it.

We were all, brothers and sisters alike, healthy and strong, vigor-
ous and active ; our appetites were curtailed only through necessity.
We played the same games together and shared the same sports —
baseball, skating, swimming, hunting. Nevertheless, except that we
all had red hair, shading from carrot to bronze, we were sharply
distinct physically. The girls were small and feminine, the boys
husky ?:id brawny. When I went out into the world and observed
men, otherwise admirable, who could not pound a nail or use a saw,
pick, shovel, or ax, I was dumfounded. I had always taken for granted
that any man could make things with his hands.

I expected this even of women. My oldest sister, Mary, possessed,
more than the rest of us, an innate charm and gentleness. She could
do anything along domestic lines — embroidery, dress making, tailor-
ing, cooking ; she could concoct the most delicious and unusual foods,
and mix delicate pastries. But she was also an expert at upholster-
ing, carpentry, painting, roofing with shingles or with thatch. When
Mary was in the house, we never had to send for a plumber. She rode
gracefully and handled the reins from the carriage seat with equal
dexterity; she could milk a cow and deliver a baby; neighbors called
her to tend their sick cattle, or, when death came, to lay out the body;

FROM WHICH I SPRING 1 5

she tutored in mathematics and Latin, and was well-read in the
classics, yet she liked most the theater, and was a dramatic critic
whose judgment was often sought. In all that she did her sweetness
and dearness were apparent, though she performed her many kind-
nesses in secret. She left the home roof while I was still a child, but
she never failed to send Christmas boxes in which every member of
the family shared, each gift beautifully wrapped and decorated with
ribbons and cards.

My brothers were ardent sportsmen, although they might not have
been outstanding scholars. They could use their fists and were as good
shots as their father. For that matter, we all knew how to shoot ; any
normal person could manage a gun. Father was a great hunter. Our
best times were when friends of his came to spend the night, talking-
late, starting early the next morning for the heavy woods which
were full of foxes, rabbits, partridge, quail, and pheasant.

Someone was always cleaning and oiling a gun in the kitchen or
carrying food to the kennels. The boys were devoted to their fox
and rabbit hounds, but father lavished his affection on bird dogs.
Our favorite came to us unsought, unbought, and I had a prideful
part in his joining the family. One afternoon I was sitting alone by
the nameless brook which ran by our house, clear and cool, deep
enough in some places to take little swims on hot summer days. I
was engaged in pinning together with thorns a wreath of leaves to
adorn my head when a large, white dog ambled up, sniffed, wagged
his tail, and seemed to want to belong. This was no ordinary cur,
but a well-bred English setter which had evidently been lost. How
father would love him !

Even though the dog had no collar, I was slightly uneasy as to
my right of ownership. One conspicuous brown-red spot on the back
of his neck simplified my problem. Unobtrusively I slipped him into
the barn, tied him up, selected a brush, dipped it in one of the cans
of paint always on hand, and multiplied the one spot by ten. For a
day, waiting for them to dry, I fed him well with food filched from
the rations of the other kennel occupants, then led him forth, his
hairy dots stiffened with paint, and offered him to father as a special
present.

Accepting the gift in the spirit in which it was intended, father

1 6 MARGARET SANGER

admired the dog's points, and, with an unmistakable twinkle, lent
himself to a deception which, of course, could deceive nobody. When
Saturday night came, the neighborhood looked the animal over ; none
knew him so we named him Toss and admitted him to the house.
Later he bred with an Irish setter of no importance, and one of the
resultant puppies, Beauty, shared his privileges.

Toss, as well as everybody else, subscribed to the idea that the
"artist" in father must be catered to. With the first sound of his
clearing his throat in the morning Toss picked up the shoes which
had been left out to be cleaned, and carried them one at a time to the
bedroom door, then stood wagging his tail, waiting to be patted. Fa-
ther's shoes were always polished, his trousers always creased. Every
day, even when going to work, he put on spotless white shirts with
starched collars and attachable cuffs ; these were something of a lux-
ury, because they had to be laundered at home, but they got done
somehow.

Father took little or no responsibility for the minute details of the
daily tasks. I can see him when he had nothing on hand, laughing
and joking or reading poetry. Mother, however, was everlastingly
busy sewing, cooking, doing this and that. For so ardent and coura-
geous a woman he must have been trying, and I still wonder at her
patience. She loved her children deeply, but no one ever doubted that
she idolized her husband, and through the years of her wedded life
to her early death never wavered in her constancy. Father's devo-
tion to mother, though equally profound, never evidenced itself in
practical ways.

The relation existing between our parents was unusual for its day ;
they had the idea of comradeship and not merely loved but liked and
respected each other. There was no quarreling or bickering ; none of
us had to take sides, saying, "Father is right," or, "Mother is right."
We knew that if we pleased one we pleased the other, and such an
atmosphere leaves its mark; we felt secure from emotional uncer-
tainty, and were ourselves guided towards certainty in our future.
We were all friends together, though not in the modern sense of
familiarity. A little dignity and formality were always maintained
and we were invariably addressed by our full names. The century of
the child had not yet been ushered in.

FROM WHICH I SPRING 1 7

In those days young people, unless invited to speak, were seen and
not heard/ But as soon as father considered us old enough to have
ideas or opinions, we were given full scope to express them jno mat-
ter how adolescent. He hated the slavery of pattern and following of
examples and believed in the equality of the sexes; not only did he
come out strongly for woman suffrage in the wake of Susan B.
Anthony, but he advocated Mrs. Bloomer's bloomers as attire for
women, though his wife and daughters never wore them. He fought
for free libraries, free education, free books in the public schools,
and freedom of the mind from dogma and cant. Sitting comfortably
with his feet on the table he used to say, "You should give something
back to your country because you as a child were rocked in the
cradle of liberty and nursed at the breast of the goddess of truth."
Father always talked like that.

Although the first Socialist in the community, father also took
single tax in his stride and became the champion and friend of Henry
George. Progress and Poverty was one of the latest additions to our
meager bookshelf. He laughed and rejoiced when he came upon what
to him were meaty sentences, reading them aloud to mother, who ac-
cepted them as fine because he said they were fine. The rest of us all
. had to plow through the book in order, as he said, to "elevate the
mind." To me it still remains one of the dullest ever written.

Mother's loyalty to father was tested repeatedly. Hers were the
responsibilities of feeding and clothing and managing on his in-
come, combined with the earnings of the oldest children. But fa-
ther's generosity took no cognizance of fact. Once he was asked to
buy a dozen bananas for supper. Instead, he purchased a stalk of
^fifteen dozen, and on his way home gave every single one to school-
boys and girls playing at recess. On another occasion he showed up
with eight of a neighbor's children ; the ninth had been quarantined
for diphtheria. They lived with us for two months, crowded into
our beds, tucked in between us at the table. Mother welcomed them
as she did his other guests. The house was always open. She was
not so much social-minded as inherently hospitable. But with her
frail body and slim pocketbook, it took courage to smile.

Once only that I can remember did mother's patience give way.
That was when father invaded her realm too drastically and invited

1 8 MARGARET SANGER

Henry George to lecture at the leading hotel — with banquet thrown
in. From the money saved for the winter coal he had taken enough
to entertain fifty men whose children were well-fed and well-clothed.
This was the sole time I ever knew my parents to be at odds, though
even then I heard no quarreling words. Whatever happened between
them I was not sure, but father spent several days wooing back the
smile and light to her eyes.

After Henry George's visit we had to go without coal most of the
winter.

With more pleasure than Progress and Poverty I recall a History
of the World, Lalla Rookh, Gulliver's Travels, and Aesop's Fables.
The last-named touched a sympathetic, philosophical chord in fa-
ther. "Wolf! Wolf!" and "Sour Grapes" were often used to ex-
emplify the trifling imperfections to which all human beings were
subject. For his parables he drew also on the Bible, the most enor-
mous volume you ever laid eyes on, brass bound, with heavy clasps,
which was the repository of the family statistics; every birth, mar-
riage, death was entered there. The handbooks to father's work
were the physiologies, one of which was combined with a materia
medica. These were especially attractive to me, perhaps because they
were illustrated with vivid plates, mostly red and blue, and described
the fascinating, unknown interior of the human body.

Neighbors were constantly coming to father for help. "What do you
think is the matter with this child?" Even without a thermometer he
could tell by feeling the skin whether you were feverish. He pre-
scribed bismuth if the diagnosis were "summer complaint," castor
oil if you had eaten something which had disagreed with you, and
always sulphur and molasses in the spring "to clean the blood."

Father's cure-all was whiskey — "good whiskey," which "liberated
the spirit." There was nothing from a deranged system to a de-
pressed mind that it could not fix up. He never drank alone, but no
masculine guest ever entered the door or sat down to pass the time of
day without his producing the bottle. "Have a little shtimulant ?"

The chief value of whiskey to father, however, was medicinal. If
mumps turned into a large, ugly abscess, he put the blade of his jack-
knife in the fire, lanced the gland, and cleaned the wound with
whiskey — good whiskey. When my face was swollen with erysipelas,

FROM WHICH I SPRING 19

he painted it morning, afternoon, and evening with tincture of io-
dine ; the doctor had so ordered. I was held firmly in place each time
this torture was inflicted, and, as soon as released, jumped and ran
screaming and howling into the cellar, where I plunged my burning
face into a pan of cool buttermilk until the pain subsided. This went
on for several days, and I was growing exhausted from the dreaded
iodine. Finally father decided to abandon the treatment and substi-
tute good whiskey. Then I recovered.

As necessary to father as the physiologies was a book by the fa-
mous phrenologist, Orson Fuller, under whom he had studied. Fa-
ther believed implicitly that the head was the sculptured expression
of the soul. Straight or slanting eyes, a ridge between them, a
turned-up nose, full lips, bulges in front of or behind the ears — all
these traits had definite meaning for him. A research worker had to
be- inquisitive, a seeker with more than normal curiosity-bumps ;
a musician had to have order and time over the eyebrows ; a pugilist
could not he made but had to have the proper protuberances around
the ears.

One of father's phrases was, "Nature is the perfect sculptor ; she
is never wrong. If you seem to have made a mistake in reading, it is
because you have not read correctly." He himself seldom made a mis-
take, and his reputation spread far and wide. Young men in confu-
sion of mind and the customary puzzled, pre-graduation state came
from Cornell and other colleges to consult him about their careers.
He examined heads and faces, told them where he thought their true
vocations lay, and supplemented this advice later with voluminous in-
terested correspondence. I could not help picking up his principles
and some of his ardor, though I have never been able to analyze char-
acter so well. No amount of front or salesmanship could divert him,
whereas I have often been taken in by a person's self-confidence and
estimation of himself.

In the predominantly Roman Catholic community of Corning, set
crosses in the cemeteries were the rule for the poor and, before they
went out of style, angels in various poses for the rich. I used to
watch father at work. The rough, penciled sketch indicated little;
even less did the first unshaped block of stone. He played with the
hard, unyielding marble as though it were clay, making a tiny chip

20 MARGARET SANGER

for a mouth, which grew rounder and rounder. A face then emerged,
a shoulder, a sweep of drapery, praying hands, until finally the whole j
stood complete with wings and halo.

Although Catholics were father's best patrons, by nature and up-
bringing he deplored their dogma. He joined the Knights of Labor,
who were agitating against the influx of unskilled immigrants from
Catholic countries, and this did not endear him to his clientele. Still
less did his espousal of Colonel Robert G. Ingersoll, a man after his
own heart, whose works he had eagerly studied and used as texts.
Once when the challenger was sounding a ringing defiance in near-by
towns, father extended an invitation to speak in Corning and en-
lighten it. He collected subscriptions to pay for the only hall in town,
owned by Father Coghlan. A notice was inserted in the paper that
the meeting would be held the following Sunday, but chiefly the
news spread by word of mouth. "Better come. Tell all your friends."

Sunday afternoon arrived, and father escorted "Colonel Bob"
from the hotel to the hall, I trotting by his side. We pushed through
the waiting crowd, but shut doors stared silently and reprovingly —
word had also reached Father Coghlan.

Some were there to hear and learn, others to denounce. Antipathies
between the two suddenly exploded in action. Tomatoes, apples, and
cabbage stumps began to fly.^This was my first experience of rage
directed against those holding views which were contrary to accepted

/ones!\[t was my first, but by no means my last. I was to encounter it
many times, and always with the same bewilderment and disdain.
My father apparently felt only the disdain. Resolutely he announced
the meeting would take place in the woods near our home an hour
later, then led Ingersoll and the "flock" through the streets. I trudged
along again, my small hand clasped in his, my head held just as high.
Who cared for the dreary, dark, little hall ! In the woodland was
room for all. Those who had come for discussion sat spell-bound on
the ground in a ring around the standing orator. For them the boo-
ing had been incidental and was ignored. I cannot remember a word
of what Colonel Ingersoll said, but the scene remains. It was late in
the afternoon, and the tall pines shot up against the fiery radiance
of the setting sun, which lit the sky with the brilliance peculiar to the
afterglows of the Chemung Valley.

FROM WHICH I SPRING 21

Florid, gray-haired Father Coghlan, probably tall in his prime,
came to call on mother. He was a kindly old gentleman, not really
intolerant. Shutting the hall had been a matter of principle; he could
not have an atheist within those sacred walls. But he was willing to
talk about it afterwards. In fact, he rather enjoyed arguing with
rebels. He was full of persuasion which he used on mother, begging
her to exercise her influence with father to make him refrain from
his evil ways. She had been reared in the faith, although since her
marriage to a freethinker which had so distressed her parents, she
had never attended church to my knowledge. The priest was troubled
to see her soul damned when she might have been a good Catholic,
and implored her to send her children to church and to the parochial
school, to stand firm against the intrusion of godlessness. Mother
must have suffered from the conflict.

None of us realized how the Ingersoll episode was to affect our
well-being. Thereafter we were known as children of the devii^ On
our way to school names were shouted, tongues stuck out, grimaces
made; the juvenile stamp of disapproval had been set upon us. But
we had been so steeped in "heretic" notions that we were not par-
ticularly bothered by this and could not see ahead into the dark fu-
ture when a hard childhood was to be made harder. No more marble
angels were to be carved for local Catholic cemeteries, and, while
father's income was diminishing, the family was increasing.

Occasionally big commissions were offered him in adjacent towns
where his reputation was still high, and he was then away for days
at a time, coming back with a thousand or fifteen hundred dollars
in his pocket; we all had new clothes, and the house was full of
plenty. Food was bought for the winter — turnips, apples, flour, po-
tatoes. But then again a year might pass before he had another one,
and meanwhile we had sunk deeply into debt.

Towards orthodox religion' father's own attitude remained one of
tolerance. He looked upon the New Testament as the noble story
of a human being which, because of ignorance and the lack of print-
ing presses, had become exaggerated. He maintained that religions
served their purpose; some people depended on them all their lives
for discipline — to keep them straight, to make them honest. Others
did not need to be so held in line. But subjection to any church was

22 MARGARET SANGER

a reflection on strength and character. You should be able to get from
yourself what you had to go to church for.

'When we asked which Sunday School we should attend, he sug-
gested, "Try them all, but be chained to none." For a year or two I
made the rounds, especially at Christmas and Easter, when you re-
ceived oranges and little bags of candy. It was always cold at the
Catholic church and the wooden benches were very bare and hard;
some seats were upholstered in soft, red cloth but these were for the
rich, who rented the pews and put dollars into the plate at collection.
I never liked to see the figure of Jesus on the cross ; we could not help
Him because He had been crucified long ago. I much preferred the
Virgin Mary; she was beautiful, smiling — the way I should like to
look when I had a baby.

Saying my prayers for mother's benefit was spasmodic. Ethel, the
sister nearest my own age, was more given than I to religious phases
and I could get her in bed faster if I said them with her. One eve-
ning when we had finished this dutiful ritual I climbed on father's
chair to kiss him good night. He asked quizzically, "What was that
you were saying about bread ?"

"Why, that was in the Lord's Prayer, 'Give us this day our daily
bread.' "

"Who were you talking to ?"

"To God."

"Is God a baker?"

I was shocked. Nevertheless, I rallied to the attack and replied as
best I could, doubtless influenced by conversations I had heard. "No,
of course not. It means the rain, the sunshine, and all the things to
make the wheat, which makes the bread."

"Well, well," he replied, "so that's the idea. Then why don't you
say so ? Always say what you mean, my daughter ; it is much better."

Thereafter I began to question what I had previously taken for
granted and to reason for myself. It was not pleasant, but father had
taught me to think. He gave none of us much peace. When we put
on stout shoes he said, "Very nice. Very comfortable. Do you know
who made them?"

"Why, yes, the shoemaker."

We then had to listen to graphic descriptions of factory conditions

FROM WHICH I SPRING 23

in the shoe industry, so that we might learn something of the misery
and poverty the workers suffered in order to keep our feet warm and
dry.

Father never talked about religion without bringing in the ballot
box. In fact, he took up Socialism because he believed it Christian
philosophy put into practice, and to me its ideals still come nearest
to carrying out what Christianity was supposed to do. Unceasingly
he tried to inculcate in us the idea that our duty lay not in consider-
ing what might happen to us after death, but in doing something here
and now to make the lives of other human beings more decent. "You
have no right to material comforts without giving back to society
the benefit of your honest experience," was one of his maxims, and
his parting words to each of his sons and daughters who had grown
old enough to fend for themselves were J "Leave the world better
because you, my child, have dwelt in it." J

This was something to live up to.

Chapter Two

BLIND GERM OF DAYS TO BE

"l think, dearest Uncle, that you cannot really wish me to be
the 'mamma d'une nombreuse famille,' for I think you will see the
great inconvenience a large family would be to us all, and particu-
larly to the country, independent of the hardship and inconvenience
to myself; men never think, at least seldom think, ivhat a hard task
it is for us women to go through this very often."

QUEEN VICTORIA to KING LEOPOLD

OFTEN when my brothers and sisters and I meet we remind
each other of funny or exciting adventures we used to have,
but I never desire to live that early part of my life again. Childhood
is supposed to be a happy time. Mine was difficult, though I did not
then think of it as a disadvantage nor do I now.

It never occurred to me to ask my parents for pocket money, but
the day came during my eighth year when I was desperately in
want of ten cents. Uncle Tom's Cabin was coming to town. On Sat-
urday afternoon I started out with one of my playmates, she with
her dime, I with nothing but faith. We reached the Corning Opera
House half an hour early. The throng at the entrance grew thicker
and thicker. Curtain time had almost come, and still no miracle.
Nevertheless, I simply had to get into that theater. All about me
had tickets or money or both. Suddenly I felt something touch my
arm — the purse of a woman who was pressed close beside me. It
was open, and I could see the coveted coins within. One quick move
and I could have my heart's desire. The longing was so deep and
hard that it blotted out everything except my imperative need. I had
to get into that theater.

I was about to put out my hand towards the bag when the doors
were thrown wide and the crowd precipitately surged forward. Be-

24

BLIND GERM OF DAYS TO BE 2$

ing small, I was shoved headlong under the ropes and into the safety
of the nearest seat. But I could take no joy in the play.

As I lay sleepless that night, after a prayer of thanks for my many
blessings, the crack of Simon Legree's whip and the off-stage hounds
baying after Eliza were not occupying my mind. Their places were
taken by pictures of the devil which had tempted me and the hand
of God which had been stretched out to save me from theft.

Following this experience, which might have been called a spiritual
awakening, I began to connect my desires with reasoning about con-
sequences. This was difficult, because my feelings were strong and
urgent. I realized I was made up of two Me's — one the thinking Me,
the other, willful and emotional, which sometimes exercised too great
a power ; there was danger in her leadership and I set myself the task
of uniting the two by putting myself through ordeals of various
sorts to strengthen the head Me. ^

To gain greater fortitude, I began to make myself do what I
feared most — go upstairs alone to bed without a light, go down cel-
lar without singing, get up on the rafters in the barn and jump on
the haystack thirty feet below. When I was able to accomplish these
without flinching I felt more secure and more strong within myself.

But ahead of me still lay the hardest task of all.

Across the Chemung some friends of ours had a farm. Their
orchard, heavy with delectable apples, seemed to me a veritable Eden.
But to reach it by the wooden wagon bridge was three miles around ;
my brothers preferred the shorter route over the high, narrow, iron
span of the Erie Railroad, under which the river raced deep and
fast. The spaced ties held no terrors for their long legs, and they
often swung them over the edge while they fished the stream beneath.
When I made the trip father and brother each gave a hand to which
I clung fiercely, and they half lifted me over the gaps which my
shorter legs could hardly compass unaided. Held tight as I was, I be-
came dizzy from the height, and a panic of terror seized me. In fact,
the mere thought of the journey, even so well supported, made me
feel queer.

The younger children were forbidden to cross the bridge unac-
companied. But I had to conquer my fear; I had to take that walk
alone. I trembled as I drew near. The more I feared it, the more

26 MARGARET SANGER

determined I was to make myself do it. I can recall now how stoically
I put one foot on the first tie and began the venturesome and pre-
carious passage stretching endlessly ahead of me. I dared not look
down at the water ; I wanted terribly to see that my feet were firmly
placed, but could not trust my head.

About halfway over I heard the hum of the steel rails. My sec-
ond dread had come upon me — the always possible train. I could
not see it because of the curve at the end of the bridge. The singing
grew louder as it came closer. I knew I could not get across in time,
and turned towards the nearest girder to which I might cling. But
it was six feet away. The engine with a whistling shriek burst into
view — snorting, huge, menacing, rushing. I stumbled and fell.

In those days I was plump, and this plumpness saved me. In-
stinctively my arms went out and curled around the ties as I dropped
between them. There I dangled over space. The bridge shook; the
thunder swelled ; the long, swift passenger cars swooped down. I was
less than three feet from the outer rail, and a new terror gripped
me. I had seen the sharp, sizzling steam jet out as locomotives drew
near the station. I screwed my eyes shut and prayed the engineer
not to turn on the steam.

After the blur of wheels had crashed by I could feel nothing.
I hung there, I do not know how long, until a friend of my father,
who had been fishing below, came to my rescue. He pulled up the
fat, aching little body, stood me on my feet again, asked me severely
whether my father knew where I was, gave me two brisk thwacks on
the bottom, turned my face towards home, and went back to his
rod and line.

After waiting a few moments to think matters over I realized
that it would be impossible for me to retrace my course. Common
sense aided me. The journey forward was no further than the jour-
ney back. I stepped ahead far more bravely, knowing if I could reach
the end of the bridge I would never be so terrified again. Though
bruised and sore I continued my cautious march and had as good a
time at the farm as usual.

However, I returned home by the wooden bridge, the long way
round, but the practical one.

When Ethel asked me that night why I was putting vaseline under

BLIND GERM OF DAYS TO BE 2^

my arms I merely said I had scratched myself. Foolhardiness was
never highly esteemed by anyone in the family. Though resource-
fulness was taken for granted, running into unnecessary danger
was just nonsense, and I wanted no censure for my disobedience.

We were seldom scolded, never spanked! If an unpleasant con-
versation were needed, no other brother or sister was witness;
•neither parent ever humiliated one child in front of another. This
was part of the sensitiveness of both. Mother in particular had a
horror of personal vehemence or acrimonious arguments; in trying
to prevent or stop them she would display amazing intrepidity —
separating fighting dogs, fighting boys, even fighting men.

Peacemaker as she was, on occasion she battled valiantly for her
loved ones, resenting bitterly the corporal punishment then customary
in schools. Once my brother Joe came home with his hands so swol-
len and blistered that he could not do his evening chore of bringing
in the wood. Mother looked carefully at them and asked him what
had happened. He explained that the teacher had fallen asleep and
several boys had started throwing spitballs. When one had hit her
on the nose she had awakened with a little scream.

Most children had the trick of burying their faces behind their
big geographies and appearing to be studying the page with the most
innocent air in the world. But Joe had no such technique. He was
doubled up with laughter. The teacher first accused him of throwing
the spitball, and, when he denied it, insisted that he name the cul-
prit. She had been embarrassed by her ridiculous situation, and had
turned her emotion into what she considered righteous indignation.
Joe had paid the penalty of being beaten for his unwillingness to vio-
late the schoolboy code of honor.

This was injustice and the surest road to mother's wrath. She
started at once the long trip to the school. When she found no one
there, she walked more miles to the teacher's home. Reproof was
called for and she administered it. But that was not enough. She
then demanded that father go to the Board of Education and take
Joe with him. There would have been no sleeping in the house with
her had he not done so. An investigation was promised, which soon
afterwards resulted in the teacher's dismissal.

The teachers at the Corning School were no worse than others of

28 MARGARET SANGER

their day ; many of them were much better. The brick building was
quite modern for the time, with a playground around it and good
principals to guide it. Its superiority was due in part to the influ-
ence of the Houghtons, the big industrialists of the town. For three
generations they had been making glassware unsurpassed for tex-
ture and beauty of design, and hardly a family of means in the coun-
try did not have at least one cut-glass centerpiece from Corning. The
factories had prospered during the kerosene lamp era, and now, with
electricity coming into its own, they were working overtime blowing
light bulbs.

Corning was not on the whole a pleasant town. Along the river
flats lived the factory workers, chiefly Irish; on the heights above
the rolling clouds of smoke that belched from the chimneys lived the
owners and executives. The tiny yards of the former were a-sprawl
with children; in the gardens on the hills only two or three played.
This contrast made a track in my mind. Large families were asso-
ciated with poverty, toil, unemployment, drunkenness, cruelty, fight-
ing, jails; the small ones with cleanliness, leisure, freedom, light,
space, sunshine.

The fathers of the small families owned their homes; the young-
looking mothers had time to play croquet with their husbands in the
evenings on the smooth lawns. Their clothes had style and charm,
and the fragrance of perfume clung about them. They walked hand
in hand on shopping expeditions with their children, who seemed
positive in their right to live. To me the distinction between happi-
ness and unhappiness in childhood was one of small families and of
large families rather than of wealth and poverty.

In our home, too, we felt the economic pressure directly ascrib-
able to size. I was always apprehensive that we might some day be
like the families on the flats, because we always had another baby
coming, another baby coming. A new litter of puppies was interest-
ing but not out of the ordinary; so, likewise, the cry of a new in-
fant never seemed unexpected. Neither excited any more curiosity
than breakfast or dinner. No one ever told me how they were born.
I just knew.

I was little more than eight when I first helped wash the fourteen-
and-a-half -pound baby after one of mother's deliveries. She had had

BLIND GERM OF DAYS TO BE 20,

a "terrible hard time," but father had pulled her through, and, in a
few weeks, tired and coughing, she was going about her work, be-
lieving as usual that her latest was the prize of perfect babies.
(Mother's eleven children were all ten-pounders or more, and both
she and father had a eugenic pride of race. I used to hear her say
that not one of hers had a mark or blemish, although she had the
utmost compassion for those who might have cleft palates, crossed
eyes, or be "born sick."

Late one night a woman rushed into our house, seeking protec-
tion, clutching in her shawl a scrawny, naked baby, raw with eczema.
When her hysteria was calmed sufficiently we learned that her hus-
band had reeled home drunk and had thrown the wailing infant
out into the snow. Father was all for summoning the police, but
mother was too wise for that. She dispatched him to talk to the
man while she gave the weeping woman a warm supper and com-
forted her. Father returned shortly to say it was safe for her to go
back to the multitude of other children because her husband had
fallen asleep. Ugly and taciturn though he was I could picture him
coming home after a hard day's work to a household racked with
the shrieks of the suffering little thing. I could see that he too was
pathetic and a victim ; I had sympathy for his rage.

Put mother did lose one of her beautiful babies. Henry George
McGlynn Higgins had been named for two of the rebel figures
father most admired. The four-year-old was playing happily in the
afternoon; a few hours later he was gasping for breath. Father
heated his home-made croup kettle on the stove until it boiled, and
then carried it steaming to be put under the blanket which rose
like a covered wagon above the bed. As soon as he realized that
home remedies were failing he sent for the doctor. But events moved
too swiftly for him. We had gone to bed with no suspicion that by
morning we should be one less. I was shocked and surprised that
something could come along and pick one of us out of the world in
so few hours.

I had no time, however, to consider the bewildering verity of
death. We all had to turn to consoling mother. Perhaps unconsciously
she had subscribed to father's theory that the face was the mirror
to the soul. She complained she had no picture of her lovely boy,

30 MARGARET SANGER

and kept reminding herself of the fine shape of his head, the wide,
well-set eyes, the familiar contours which had been wiped forever
from her sight, and might soon be sponged from her memory as
well.

Mother's grief over her lost child increased father's. Because in
part he blamed himself, he was desperate to assuage her sorrow. The
day after the burial he was constantly occupied in his studio, and
when evening fell he took me affectionately by the hand asking me
to stay up and help him on a piece of work he was about to do. I
agreed willingly.

About eleven o'clock we went forth together into the pitch-black
night, father pushing ahead of him a wheelbarrow full of tools and a
bag of plaster of Paris. We walked on and on through the stillness
for fully two miles to the cemetery where the little brother had been
buried. Father knew every step, but it was scary and I clung to his
hand.

Just beyond the gateway father hid the lighted lantern in the near-
by bushes over a grave and told me to wait there unless I heard some-
body coming. He expected me to be grown up at the age of ten.
Nerves meant sickness; if any child cried out in the night it was
merely considered "delicate." Consequently I obeyed and watched,
shivering with cold and excitement, darting quick glances at the
ghostly forms of some of father's monuments which loomed out of
the darkness around me. I could hear the steady chunk, chunk, chunk
of his pick and shovel, and the sharper sound when suddenly he struck
the coffin.

Father had taken it as a matter of course that I should under-
stand and had not explained what he was about to do. But I never
questioned his actions. I did not know there was a law against a
man's digging up his own dead child but, even had I known, I would
have believed that the law was wrong.

We traveled back the long, weary way, arriving home in the early
hours of the morning. Nothing was said to mother or to the others
about that amazing night's adventure ; I was not told to keep silent,
but I knew there was mystery in the air and it was no time to talk.

For two evenings I worked with father, helping him break the
death mask, mold and shape the cast. I remember the queer feeling

BLIND GERM OF DAYS TO BE 3 1

I had when I discovered some of the hair which had stuck in the
plaster. On the third day, just after supper, father said to us all,
"Will you come into the studio?" With tender eyes on mother he
uncovered and presented to her the bust of the dead little boy.

She was extraordinarily comforted. Though to me the model, per-
fect as it was, seemed lifeless, every once in a while she entered
the studio, took off the cloth which protected it from the dust, wept
and was relieved, re-covered it and went on.

Not one of us dared to utter a word of criticism about mother's
adored and adoring husband; nevertheless her soul was harassed
at times by his philosophy of live and let live, by his principles against
locked doors and private property. She was merely-selfless. Often
when one of her children was feverish she went to the kitchen pump
for water so that it might be cooler and fresher for parched lips.
Once, groping her way on such an errand, she stumbled over a
tramp who had taken advantage of the unlatched door and lay
sprawled on the floor. She rushed back to arouse father, telling him
he must put the man out. But he only turned over on his side and
muttered, "Oh, let him alone. The poor divil needs sleep like the
rest of us."

Another night mother was awakened by noises outside. "Father,"
she called, "there's somebody at the hencoop!"

"What makes you think so?" he answered sleepily.

"I hear the chickens. They wouldn't make a noise unless some-
body was in there. Get up !"

Obediently father put on his trousers and coat; not even before
thieves would he appear in his nightshirt out of his bedroom. He
proceeded to the kitchen door, and, holding a lamp on high, addressed
the two men, one of whom was handing out chickens to the other,
"Hey, you, there! What do you mean by coming to a man's house
in the middle of the night and shtealing his chickens? What kind of
citizens are you ?"

This seemed to mother no time for a moral lecture. "Why don't
you go out ?" she prodded.

"It's raining."

"Give me the lamp !" she demanded, exasperated.

She started towards our nearest neighbor, splashing through the

32 MARGARET SANGER

little brook, getting her feet wet, calling, "Some one's in our chicken
house !"

Our neighbor armed himself and came running. A man with a
gun sent the marauders scurrying up the hill. That was mother's
philosophy. I think father fell in her estimation for a few days after
this. She expected him to be the guardian of the home, but he was
never that. His liberal views were so well known that our house was
marked with the tramp's patrin of the first degree. "Always get
something here. Never be turned away." If it happened to be pay
day they could count on a quarter as well as a meal.

One particular evening we were expecting father home, his pock-
ets bulging with the money from his latest commission, but by night-
fall he had not yet returned. When mother heard a rap at the door
she went eagerly to open it. Two ragged strangers were standing
there.

"Is the boss in ?"

"No, but I'm looking for him any minute."

"We want something to eat."

With no more ceremony than was customary among the knights of
the open road they pushed through the door and made for the
kitchen, plainly knowing their way about.

"How dare you come into this house!" exclaimed mother indig-
nantly. "Toss! Beauty!" she cried sharply. The fear in her voice
brought the dogs lunging downstairs with fangs bared and hackles
bristling. They leaped at the backs of the uninvited guests.

Father came in a few hours later. The door was swinging wide,
the snow was blowing in. Torn scraps of clothing, spots of blood
were about, and mother was unconscious on the floor. He poured
whiskey down her throat. "It was only good whiskey that brought
you to," he often said afterwards, recalling his alarm. He used the
same remedy to pull her through the ensuing six weeks of pneumonia.
But he had been so thoroughly worried that his generosity towards
tramps lessened and his largesse was curtailed.

After this illness mother coughed more than ever and it was evi-
dent the pines were not helping her. Father decided to move; the
house was so obviously marked and he had to be gone so much he
thought it unsafe for us to live alone so far away.

Chapter Three

BOOKS ARE THE COMPASSES

SO we moved into town, still on the western hills. It marked the
beginning of my adolescence, and such breaks are always dis-
turbing. In the house in the woods we had all been children together,
but now some of us were growing up.

Nevertheless, there were always smaller ones to be put to bed, to
be rocked to sleep; there were feet and knees to be scrubbed and
hands to be washed. Although we had more space, home study some-
times seemed to me impossible. The living room was usually occu-
pied by the older members of the family, and the bedrooms were cold.
I kept up in my lessons, but it was simply because I enjoyed them.

In most schools teachers and pupils then were natural enemies,
and the one I had in the eighth grade was particularly adept at arous-
ing antagonism. She apparently disliked her job and the youngsters
under her care as much as we hated her. Sarcasm was both her de-
'fense and weapon of attack. One day in mid-June I was delayed in
getting off for school. Well aware that being tardy was a heinous
crime, I hurried, pulling and tugging at my first pair of kid gloves,
which Mary had just given me. But the bell had rung two minutes
before I walked into the room, flushed and out of breath.

The teacher had already begun the class. She looked up at the in-
terruption. "Well, well, Miss Higgins, so your ladyship has arrived
at last ! Ah, a new pair of gloves ! I wonder that she even deigns to
come to school at all."

Giggles rippled around me as I went into tKe cloakroom and laid

33

34 MARGARET SANGER

down my hat and gloves. I came back, praying the teacher would
pay no more attention to me, but as I walked painfully to my seat
she continued repeating with variations her mean comments. Even
when I sat down she did not stop. I tried to think of something else,
tried not to listen, tried to smile with the others. I endured it as long
as I could, then took out my books, pyramiding arithmetic, gram-
mar, and speller, strapped them up; rose, and left.

Mother was amazed when I burst in on her. "I will never go back
to that school again !" I exclaimed dramatically. "I have finished for-
ever ! I'll go to jail, I'll work, I'll starve, I'll die ! But back to that
school and teacher I will never go !"

As older brothers and sisters drifted home in the evening, they
were as horrified as mother. "But you have only two weeks more,"
they expostulated.

"I don't care if it's only an hour. I will not go back!"

When it became obvious that I would stick to my point, mother
seemed glad to have me to help her. I was thorough and strong and
could get through a surprising amount of work in no time. But the
rest of the family was seriously alarmed. The next few months were
filled with questions I could not answer. "What can you ever be with-
out an education?" "Are you equipped to earn a living?" "Is factory
life a pleasant prospect? If you don't go back to school, you'll surely
end there."

"All right. I'll go to work!" I announced defiantly. Work, even
in the factory, meant money, and money meant independence. I had
no rebuttal to their arguments; I was acting on an impulse that
transcended reason, and must have recognized that any explanation
as to my momentous decision would sound foolish.

Then suddenly father, mother, my second older sister Nan, and
Mary, who had been summoned to a family council, tried other tac-
tics. I was sent for two weeks to Chautauqua, there to take courses,
hear lectures from prominent speakers, listen to music. This was de-
signed to stimulate my interest in education and dispel any idea I
might have of getting a job.

My impulse had been misconstrued. I was not rebelling against
education as such, but only against that particular school and that
particular teacher. When fall drew near and the next session was at

BOOKS ARE THE COMPASSES 35

hand I was still reiterating that I would not go back, although I still
had no answer to Nan's repeated, "What are you going to do ?"

Nan was perhaps the most inspiring of all my brothers and sisters.
The exact contrary to father, 'she wanted us all to conform and was
in tears if we did not. To her, failure in this respect showed a lack
of breeding. Yet even more important than conformity was knowl-
edge, which was the basis for all true culture. She herself wanted to
write, and had received prizes for stories from St. Nicholas and the
Youth's Companion. But the family was too dependent upon the
earnings of the older girls, and she was obliged to postpone college
and her equally ardent desire to study sculpture. She became a trans-
lator of French and German until these aspirations could be fulfilled.

At the time of my mutiny Nan was especially disturbed. "You
won't be able to get anywhere without an education," she stated
firmly. She and Mary, joining forces, together looked for a school,
reasonable enough for their purses, but good enough academically
to prepare me for Cornell. Private education was not so expensive as
today, and families of moderate means could afford it. My sisters
selected Claverack College and Hudson River Institute, about three
miles from the town of Hudson in the Catskill Mountains., Here, in
one of the oldest coeducational institutions in the country, the Meth-
odist farmers of the Dutch valley enrolled their sons and daughters ;
unfortunately it is now gone and with it the healthy spirit it typified.
One sister paid my tuition and the other bought my books and
clothes ; for my board and room I was to work. ,
j Going away to school was epochal in my life. The self-contained
family group was suddenly multiplied to five hundred strangers, all
living and studying under one roof. The girls' dormitory was at one
end, the boys' at the other, but we shared the same dining room and
sat together in classes ; occasionally a boy could call on a girl in the
reception hall if a teacher were present. I liked best the attitude of the
teachers; they were not so much policemen as companions and
friends, and their instruction was more individual and stimulating
than at Corning.

I did not have money to do things the other girls did — go off
for week-ends or house-parties — but waiting on table or washing
dishes did not set me apart. The work was far easier than at home,

36 MARGARET SANGER

and a girl was pretty well praised for doing her share. At first the stu-
dents all appeared to me uninteresting and lacking in initiative. I never
found the same imaginative quality I was used to in my family, but
as certain ones began to stand out I discovered they had personali-
ties of their own.

I had been at Claverack only a few days and was still feeling home-
sick when in the hall one morning I encountered the most beautiful
creature I had ever seen. Long hair flying from her shoulders, she
was so slender and wraithlike that she seemed unreal. I have never
since been so moved by human loveliness as I was by Esther's. I
cried at night because I sensed it was something I could not reach.
Even her clothes were unlike all others. Many girls envied their
taste and quality, but I knew they belonged to her of right. Of every
book I had read she was the heroine come alive.

Worlds apart though we were in tradition, looks, behavior, ex-
perience, Esther and I had the same romantic outlook. Having as-
pirations for the theater, she remained only one year and then left
to attend Charles Frohman's dramatic school. I had been too over-
powered by my admiration for her to be happy in it, and it kept me
from caring particularly about anyone else. Nevertheless, I am con-
vinced that in any interchange of affection the balance is unequal;
one must give and the other be able to receive. My second year I was
the recipient of devotion from a younger girl similar to that I had
showered upon Esther. The loyalty and praise of Amelia Stuart,
my laughing friend, fed all the empty spaces in my heart. She was
gay and clever, a Methodist by upbringing but not by conviction.
Each Sunday afternoon, given over to the reading of the Bible, we
received permission to study together in my room, and there occu-
pied ourselves dutifully, I in mending and darning, and she reading
aloud, but interspersing solemn passages with ridiculous exaggera-
tions. What was intended to be a serious exercise of the spirit was
turned into merriment.

My friendship with these two girls has been interrupted, but never
broken.

Very shortly after my arrival at Claverack I had been infected
by that indefinable, nebulous quality called school spirit, and before
long was happily in the thick of activities. Assembly was held in the

BOOKS ARE THE COMPASSES 37

chapel every morning, during which we all in turn had to render
small speeches and essays, or recite selections of poetry. I had a vivid
feeling of how things should be said, putting more dramatic fervor
into certain lines than my limited experience of the theater would
seem to explain, and on this account the elocution teacher encouraged
me to have faith in my talents.

Every girl, I suppose, at some time or other wants to be an
actress. Mary had taken me to the theater now and then, once when
Maude Adams was playing Juliet to John Drew's Romeo, and had
gone to some pains to explain to me the difference between artistes
like Mary Anderson or Julia Marlowe and mere beauty as such. She
would not have been pleased at my seeing Lillian Russell, which I
did during a Christmas holiday in New York; Lillian Russell was
too glamorous and, furthermore, she was said to have accepted
jewelry from men.

One vacation I announced to my family that I was thinking of a
stage career. Disapproval was evident on all sides. Father pooh-
poohed ; Mary alone held out hope. She said I had ability and should
go to dramatic school in New York as soon as I had finished Claver-
ack. She would apply immediately to Charles Frohman to have me
understudy Maude Adams, whom I at least was said to resemble
physically — small and with the same abundant red-brown hair. Lack-
ing good features I took pride only in my thick, long braids. I used
to decorate them with ribbons and admire the effect in the mirror.

The application was made; I was photographed in various poses
with and without hats. A return letter from the school management
came, enclosing a form to be filled in with name, address, age, height,
weight, color of hair, eyes, and skin.

r But additional data were required as to the exact length of the
legs, both right and left, as well as measurements of ankle, calf, knee,
and thigh. I knew my proportions in a general way. Those were the
days when every pack of cigarettes carried a bonus in the shape of a
pictured actress, plump and well- formed. In the gymnasium the girls
had compared sizes with these beauties. But to see such personal in-
formation go coldly down on paper to be sent off to strange men was
unthinkable. I had expected to have to account for the quality of my
voice, for my ability to sing, to play, for grace, agility, character, and

38 MARGARET SANGER

morals. Since I could not see what legs had to do with being a sec-
ond Maude Adams, I did not fill in the printed form nor send the
photographs, but just put them all away, and turned to other fields
where something beside legs was to count.

Chapel never bored me. I had come to dislike ritual in many of
the churches I had visited — kneeling for prayer, sitting for instruc-
tion, standing for praise. But in a Methodist chapel anyone could
get up and express a conviction. Young sprouts here were thinking
and discussing the Bible, religion, and politics. Should the individual
be submerged in the state? If you had a right to free thought as an
individual, should you give it up to the church ?

We scribbled during study periods, debated in the evenings. With-
out always digesting them but with great positiveness I carried over
many of the opinions I had heard expounded at home. To most of
the boys and girls those Saturday mornings when the more ambitious
efforts were offered represented genuine torture. They stuttered and
stammered painfully. I was just as nervous — more so probably.
Nevertheless, I was so ardent for suffrage, for anything which would
"emancipate" women and humanity, that I was eager to proclaim
theories of my own.

Father was still the spring from which I drank, and I sent long
letters home, getting in reply still longer ones, filled with ammuni-
tion about the historical background of the importance of women
— Helen of Troy, Ruth, Cleopatra, Poppaea, famous queens, women
authors and poets.

When news spread that I was to present my essay, "Women's
Rights," the boys, following the male attitude which most people
have forgotten but which every suffragette well remembers, jeered
and drew cartoons of women wearing trousers, stiff collars, and
smoking huge cigars. Undeterred, I was spurred on to think up new
arguments. I studied and wrote as never before, stealing away to
the cemetery and standing on the monuments over the graves. Each
day in the quiet of the dead I repeated and repeated that speech out
loud. What an essay it was !

"Votes for Women" banners were not yet flying, and this early
faint bleating of mine aroused little enthusiasm. I turned then to an
equally stern subject. The other students had automatically accepted

BOOKS ARE THE COMPASSES 39

the cause of solid money. I espoused free silver. At Chautauqua I had
heard echoes of those first notes sounded by Bryan for the working
classes. The spirit of humanitarianism in industry had been growing
and swelling, but it was still deep buried. I believe any great con-
cept must be present in the mass consciousness before any one figure
can tap it and set it free on its irresistible way.

I had not seen the "Boy Orator of the Platte," but the country
was ringing with his words, "You shall not press down upon the
brow of labor this crown of thorns; you shall not crucify mankind
upon a cross of gold." These rich and sonorous phrases made me
realize the importance of clothing ideas in fine language. Far more,
however, they struck a solemn chord within me. I, also, in an ob-
scure and unformed way, wanted to help grasp Utopia from the
skies and plant it on earth. But what to do and where to start I
did not know.

Due to my "advanced ideas," for a time, at least, I am sorry to
say, it was chiefly the grinds with whom I "walked in Lovers' Lane,"
nodding wisely and answering their earnest aspirations with pro-
found advice. But this did not last. Soon I was going through the
usual boy and girl romances ; each season brought a new one. I took
none of them very seriously, but adroitly combined flirtatiousness
with the conviction that marriage was something towards which I
must develop. Therefore I turned the vague and tentative suggestions
of my juvenile beaus by saying, "I would never think of jumping into
marriage without definite preparation and study of its responsibili-
ties." Practically no women then went into professions; matrimony
was the only way out. It seems ages ago.

Various pranks occurred at Claverack, such as taking walks with
boys out of bounds and going forbidden places for tea. Towards the
end of my last year I thought up the idea that several of us should
slip out through the window and down to the village dance hall
where our special admirers would meet us. About eleven-thirty, in
the midst of the gayety, in walked our principal, Mr. Flack, together
with the preceptress who had come for the "ladies." We were all
marched back to school, uneasy but silent.

The next morning I received a special invitation to call at The
Office. I entered. Mr. Flack, a small, slight, serious, student type of

40 MARGARET SANGER

man, with a large head and high brow, was standing with his back
to me. I sat down. He gave me no greeting but kept on at his books.
To all appearances he did not know I was there. Then, without look-
ing around, he said, "Miss Higgins, don't you feel rather ashamed
of yourself for getting those girls into trouble last night, by taking
them out and making them break the rules ? They may even have to
be sent home."

Although surprised that he should have known I was the one re-
sponsible, I could not deny it, but it flashed across my mind at first
that someone must have told him. He went on with rapid flow,
almost as though talking to himself, "I've watched you ever since
you came and I don't need to be told that you must have been the
ringleader. Again and again I've noticed your influence over others.
I want to call your attention to this, because I know you're going to
use it in the future. You must make your choice — whether to get
yourself and others into difficulty, or else guide yourself and others
into constructive activities which will do you and them credit."

I do not quite recall what else he said, but I have never forgotten
going out of his room that day. This could not exactly be called a
turning point in my life^ but from then on I realized more strongly
than before that there was a something within myself which could
and should be kept under my control and direction.

Long afterwards I wrote to thank Mr. Flack for his wisdom in
offering guidance instead of harsh discipline. He died a few years
later, and I was glad I had been able to place a rose in his hand rather
than on his grave.

I spent three happy years at Claverack. The following season I de-
cided to try my hand at teaching, A,$hen a lady-like thing to do. A
position was open to me in the first grade of a new public school in
southern New Jersey. The majority of the pupils — Poles, Hun-
garians, Swedes — coulii not speak English. In they came regularly.
I was beside myself to know what to do with eighty- four children
who could not understand a word I said. I loved those small, black-
haired and tow-headed urchins who became bored with sitting and,
on their own, began stunts to entertain themselves. But I was so tired
at the end of the day that I often lay down before dressing for dinner
and awakened the next morning barely in time to start the routine.

BOOKS ARE THE COMPASSES 41

In very short order I became aware of the fact that teaching was not
merely a job, it was a profession, and training was necessary if you
were to do it well. I was not suited by temperament, and therefore
had no right to this vocation.fi had been struggling for only a brief
while when father summoned me home to nurse mother. )

She was weak and pale and the high red spots on her cheek bones
stood out startlingly against her white face. Although she was now
spitting blood when she coughed we still expected her to live on for-
ever. She had been ill so long; this was just another attack among
many. Father carried her from room to room, and tried desperately
to devise little comforts. We shut the doors and windows to keep out
any breath of the raw March air, and in the stuffy atmosphere we
toiled over her bed.

(In an effort to be more efficient in caring for mother I tried to findv
out something about consumption by borrowing medical books from \
the library of the local doctor, who was a friend of the family, and in \
doing this became so interested in medicine that I decided definitely I
I would study to be an M.D. \Vhen I went back for more volumes /
and announced my decision the doctor gave them to me, but smiled/
tolerantly, "You'll probably get over it."

I had been closely confined for a long time when I was invited to
Buffalo for the Easter holidays to meet again one of the boys by
whom I had been beaued at Claverack. Mother insisted that I needed
a vacation. Mary and Nan were both there ; I could stay with them,
and we planned a pleasant trip to Niagara Falls for the day.

With me out of the way mother sent off the little children one by
one on some pretext or another. She had more difficulty with father.
The fire bricks in the stove had split and she told him he must go to
town and get new ones. Much against his will, because he was vaguely
unquiet, he started for the foundry. He had left only because mother
seemed to want it so much, but when he had walked a few blocks, he
found he could not go on. For some Celtic mystic reason of his own
he turned abruptly around and came back to the house. Mother was
gasping in death. All the family hated scenes, she most of all. She
had known she was to die and wanted to be alone.

It was a folk superstition that a consumptive who survived through
the month of March would live until November. .Mother died on

42 MARGARET SANGER

the thirty-first of the month, leaving father desolate and inconsol-
able. I came flying home. The house was silent and he hardly spoke.
Suddenly the stillness of the night was broken by a wailing and Toss
was found with his paws on the coffin, mourning and howling — the
most poignant and agonizing sound I had ever heard.

[I had to take mother's place — manage the finances, order the
meals, pay the debts. There was nothing left for my clothing nor for
any outside diversions. All that could be squeezed out by making
this or that do had to go for shoes or necessities for the younger
brothers. Mend, patch, sew as you would, there was a limit to the
endurance of trousers, and new ones had to be purchased.

To add to my woes, father seemed to me, who was sensitive to
criticism, suddenly metamorphosed from a loving, gentle, benevolent
parent into a most aggravating, irritating tyrant ; nobody in any fairy
tale I had ever read was quite so cruel. He who had given us the
world in which to roam now apparently wanted to put us behind
prison bars. His unreasonableness was not directed towards the boys,
who were in bed as soon as lessons were done, but towards his
daughters, Ethel and me. Whatever we did was wrong. He objected
particularly to young men.

Ethel was receiving the concentrated attention of Jack Byrne. Fa-
ther in scolding her said she should mix more. My beaus were a little
older than the ones I had had at school, and more earnest in their
intentions. Though not one really interested me — their conversation
seemed flat, consisting of foolish questions and smart, silly replies
— father scolded me also about them, "Why aren't you serious like
your sister? Can't you settle yourself to one? Do you have to have
somebody different every evening?"

Messages were coming to me from a young man going West, post-
marked Chicago or San Francisco. These daily letters and some-
times telegrams as well, were not father's idea of wooing. What could
anyone have to say every day? To his way of thinking, a decent
man came to the house and did his talking straight; he sat around
with the family and got acquainted. Father said, 'That fellow's a
scoundrel. He's too worldly. He's not even known in town."

We had to ask permission whether Tom or Jack or Henry could
call. Without reason or explanation father said, "No," and that was

BOOKS ARE THE COMPASSES 43

an end to it. If we went out, we had to be back at ten and give an
account of ourselves.

Then came the climax. Ethel and I had gone to an open-air con-
cert. On the stroke of ten we were a full block away from home
running with all our might. When we arrived, three minutes late,
the house was in utter darkness — not a sight nor sound of a living
creature anywhere. We banged and knocked. We tried the front
door, the back, and the side, then again the front. It opened part
way; father looked out, reached forth a hand and caught Ethel's
arm, saying, "This outrageous behavior is not your fault. Come in."
With that he pulled her inside, and the door slammed, leaving me in
the dark, stunned and bewildered. I did not know this monster. -

Hurt beyond words, I sat down on the steps, worrying not only
about this night but about the next day and the next, concerned
over the children left at home with this new kind of father. I was
sure if I waited long enough he would come out for me, but it was a
chilly evening in October. I had no wrap, and began to grow very
cold.

I walked away from the house, trying to decide where I should go
and what I should do. I could not linger on the streets indefinitely,
with the possibility of encountering some tipsy factory hand or drum-
mer passing through. At first there seemed no one to turn to. Finally,
exhausted by stress of emotion, I went to the home of the girl who
had been with us at the concert. She had not yet gone to bed, and her
mother welcomed me so hospitably that I shall be eternally grateful.
The next morning she lent me carfare to go to Elmira, where I had
friends with whom I could stay.

Meantime father had found me gone. He had dressed and tramped
up and down First Street, searching every byway, inquiring whether
I had been seen. When he had returned at daybreak to find me still
missing he had sent word to Mary, who received his message at
almost the same time as one from me, telling her not to worry ; I was
all right. Both of them urged me to come back to Corning, and in a
few days I did so, taking up again my responsibilities. Father and I
tried to talk it over, but we could not meet on the old ground; be-
tween us a deep silence had fallen.

Father had almost stopped expounding; instead, he was reading

44 MARGARET SANGER

more. Debs had come on his horizon, and the Socialist papers crop-
ping up all over the country were appearing in the house. From the
Free Library, which he had helped to establish years earlier, he was
borrowing Spencer, who was modern for that time, and other books
on sociology.

I had given up encouraging young men to see me, but I, too, was
patronizing the library. My books were fiction. "All nonsense," fa-
ther snorted at the mention of such titles as Graustark, Prisoners of
Hope, or Three Musketeers. The word "novel" was still shocking
to many people, and he classed them all as "love stories." "Read
to cultivate and uplift your mind. Read what will benefit you in the
battle of life," he admonished. But I continued my escape from the
daily humdrum to revel in romances, devouring them in the evenings
and hiding them under the mattress during the day.

One noon when I was waiting for the children to come in to
lunch I was buried in David Harum, finding it very funny, and did
not hear father enter. He stood ominously in the doorway. I should
have felt trapped, but, instead, without warning and without reason,
the old love flamed up again. I laughed and laughed. I was no longer
afraid nor did I care for his scowls or his silly old notions. The
long silence was broken.

"Do listen to this." And I started reading. The frown began to
melt away and soon father too was chuckling. This was the first
laughter that had been heard in that dreary household since mother's
death. The book disappeared into his room, and soon thereafter he
was caught seeking more of "that nonsense."

At last I realized why father had been so different. He had been
lonely for mother, lonely for her love, and doubtless missed her
ready appreciation of his own longings and misgivings. Then, too,
he had always before depended on her to understand and direct us.
He was probably a trifle jealous, though not consciously, because he
considered jealousy an animal trait far beneath him, and refused to
recognize it in himself. Nevertheless, beaus had been sidetracking
the affections of his little girls. So oppressed had he been by his sense
of responsibility that he had slipped in judgment and in so doing
slid into the small-town rut of propriety. His belated discipline,

BOOKS ARE THE COMPASSES 45

caused by worry and anxiety, was merely an attempt to guide his
children.

I, however, considered the time had passed for such guidance. I
had to step forth by myself along the experimental path of adult-
hood. Though the immediate occasion for reading medical books had
ceased with mother's death, I had never, during these months, lost
my deep conviction that perhaps she might have been saved had I had
sufficient knowledge of medicine. This was linked up with my latent
desire to be of service in the world. The career of a physician seemed
to fulfill all my requirements., I could not at the moment see how the
gap in education from Claverack to medical school was to be bridged.
Nevertheless, I could at least make a start with nursing, j
j But father, though he proclaimed his belief in perfect independ-
ence of thought and mind, could not approve nursing as a profession,
even when I told him that some of the nicest girls were going into
it. "Well, they won't be nice long," he growled. . Tt's no sort of work
for girls to be doing." .My argument that he himself had taught us
to help other people had no effect.

Father's notions, however, were not going to divert me from my
intention; no matter how peaceful the home atmosphere had be-
come, still I had to get out and try my wings. For six months more
we jogged along, then, just a year after mother had died, Esther
asked me to visit her in New York. I really wanted to train in the
city, but her mother knew someone on the board of the White Plains
Hospital, which was just initiating a school. There I was accepted as
a probationer.

Chapter Four

DARKNESS THERE AND NOTHING MORE

THE old White Plains Hospital, not at all like a modern insti-
tution, had been a three-storied manor house, long deserted
because two people had once been found mysteriously dead in it
and thereafter nobody would rent or buy. The hospital board, scoff-
ing at superstition, had gladly purchased it at the low price to which
it had been reduced. However, in spite of rearrangements and re-
decorating, many people in White Plains went all the way to the
Tarrytown Hospital rather than enter the haunted portals.

Once set in spacious grounds the building was still far back from
the road ; a high wall immediately behind it shut off the view of the
next street and nothing could be seen beyond except the roof of what
had been the stable. The surrounding tall trees made it shadowy even
in the daytime. To reach the office you had to cross a broad pillared
veranda. Parlor and sitting room had been thrown together for the
male ward, and an operating room had been tacked on to the rear.
The great wide stairway of fumed oak, lighted at night by low-
turned gas jets, swept up through the lofty ceiling. On the second
floor were the female ward and a few private rooms. The dozen or
so nurses slept in the made-over servants' quarters under the gam-
brel roof.

Student nurses in large modern hospitals have little idea what our
life was like in a small one thirty-five years ago. The single bath-
room on each floor was way at the back.^ We did not have a resident

46

DARKNESS THERE AND NOTHING MORE 47

interne, and, consequently, had to depend mainly upon our own
judgment. Since we had no electricity, we could not ring a bell and
have our needs supplied, and had to use our legs for elevators. A pro-
bationer had to learn to make dressings, bandages, mix solutions,
and toil over sterilizing. She put two inches of water in the wash-
boiler, laid a board across the bricks placed in the bottom, and bal-
anced the laundered linen and gauze on top. Then, clapping on the
lid, she set the water to boiling briskly, watched the clock, and when
the prescribed number of minutes had elapsed the sterilizing was
over.

The great self-confidence with which I entered upon my duties
soon received a slight shock. One of our cases was an old man from
the County Home. He complained chiefly of pains in his leg and,
since his condition was not very serious, the superintendent of nurses
left him one afternoon in my care. This was my first patient. When
I heard the clapper of his little nickeled bell, I hurried with a pro-
fessional air to his bedside.

"Missy, will you please bandage up my sore leg? It does me so
much good."

Having just had my initial lesson in bandaging, I was elated at
this opportunity to try my skill... I set to work with great precision,
and, when I had finished, congratulated myself on a neat job, ad-
miring the smooth white leg. My first entry went on his record sheet.

A little later the superintendent, in making her rounds, regarded
the old man perplexedly.

"Why have you got your leg bandaged?"

"I asked the nurse to do it for me."

"Why that leg? It's the other one that hurts." .

"Oh, she was so kind I didn't want to stop her."

I bowed my head in embarrassment, but I was young and eager,
and it did not stay bowed long.

Within a short period I considered myself thoroughly inured to
what many look upon as the unpleasant aspects of nursing ; the sight
of blood never made me squeamish and I had watched operations,
even on the brain, with none of the usual sick giddiness. Then
one day the driver of a Macy delivery wagon, who had fallen off the
seat, was brought in with a split nose. I was holding the basin for

48 MARGARET SANGER

the young doctor who was stitching it up, when one of the other
nurses said something to tease him. He dropped his work, leaving
the needle and cat-gut thread sticking across the patient's nose, and
chased her out of the room and down the hall. The patient, painless
under a local anesthetic, gazed mildly after them; but the idea
that doctor and nurse could be so callous as to play jokes horri-
fied me.\

When pursuer and pursued returned they found me in a heap on
the floor, the basin tipped over beside me, instruments and sponges
scattered everywhere. The patient was still sitting quietly waiting
for all the foolishness to stop. I am glad to say this was the one and
only time I ever fainted on duty.

The training, rigid though it was, would have been far less diffi-
cult had it not been for the truly diabolical head nurse. In the morn-
ing she was all smiles, so saintly that you could almost glimpse the
halo around her head. But as the day wore on the demon in her ap-
peared. She could always think up extra things for you to do to keep
you from your regular afternoon two hours off. This was particu-
larly hard on me because I had developed tubercular glands and was
running a temperature. In my second year I was operated on, and
two weeks later assigned to night duty, where I stayed for three
awful months.

My worst tribulation came during this period. People then seldom
went to hospitals with minor ailments ; our patients were commonly
the very sick, requiring a maximum of attention. There was no or-
derly and I could use only my left hand because my right shoulder
was still bandaged. I took care of admissions, entered case histories,
and, when sharp bells punctuated the waiting stillness, sometimes one
coming before I had time to answer the first, I pattered hurriedly up
and down the three flights, through the shadows relieved only by the
faint red glow from the gas jets. I suppose adventures were inevita-
ble.

One night an Italian was picked up on the street in a state of
almost complete exhaustion, and brought to the hospital. He was so
ill with suspected typhoid that he should have had a "special," but in-
stead he was placed in the ward. An old leather couch stood across
the windows, and whenever a pause came in my duties I lay down.

DARKNESS THERE AND NOTHING MORE 49

From there I could keep an eye on my new patient. Sick as he was
he insisted on making the long trip through the ward to the bath-
room. I could not explain how unwise this was, because he could
not understand a word of English. He must have reeled out of his
bed between thirty and forty times.

Just as the early spring dawn came creeping in the window be-
hind me I grew drowsy. I was on the point of dozing off when
some premonition warned me and I opened my eyelids enough to see
the man reach under his pillow, take something out cautiously, glide
from his bed. Spellbound I watched him slithering soft-footedly as
he edged his way towards me. I seemed to be hypnotized with sleep
and could not stir. He came nearer and nearer with eyes fixed, hands
behind him. Suddenly I snapped into duty, arose quickly, ordered
him back to bed, and ran ahead to straighten his sheets and pillows,
not realizing my danger until he loomed over me, his knife in his
hand. Before he could thrust I grabbed his arm and held it. Though
I was small-boned I had good muscles, and he was very ill.

Meanwhile, another patient snatched up his bell and rang, and rang
and rang. Nobody answered. The nurses were too far away to hear ;
the other patients in the ward were unable to help me. But the man
quickly used up what little energy he had, and I was able to get the
knife from him, push him back in bed, and take his temperature. I as-
sumed he had suddenly become delirious.

About seven o'clock I answered a summons to the front door and
found three policemen who wanted to know whether we had an
Italian patient. "Indeed we have," I answered feelingly and called
the superintendent.

When the red tape was unwound, I learned that my Italian be-
longed to a gang which had been hiding in a cave between Tarry-
town and White Plains, holding up passers-by. Amongst them they
had committed five murders. The others had all been hunted down,
but this man's collapse had temporarily covered his whereabouts. The
attack on me had apparently been merely incidental to his attempt at
escape through the open window behind me. He was carried off to
the County Hospital Jail, and I was not sorry to see him go.

After this incident an orderly was employed and, though he was
allowed to sleep at night, it was reassuring to know he could be called

5<D MARGARET SANGER

in an emergency. The emergency soon arose. A young man of about
twenty-five, of well-to-do parents, was admitted as an alcoholic. I re-
member that I was impressed by the softness of his handshake when
I greeted him. He had the first symptoms of delirium tremens but he
was now perfectly conscious and needed no more than routine at-
tention.

Sometime in the night the new arrival asked me to get him a drink
of water. When I came back into the room and offered it to him he
knocked me into the corner ten feet away. As my head banged
against the wall, he leaped out of bed after me and reached down for
my throat. Though half -stunned and off my feet, I yet had more
strength than the man whose flabby muscles refused to obey his will.
The patient in the adjoining bed rang and in a few moments the
orderly came to my assistance. Between us we got the poor crazed
youth into a strait jacket. The doctor who was summoned could do
nothing and in the morning the young man mercifully died.

To differentiate between things real and things imaginary was not
always easy at nighttime. One morning about two o'clock I was
writing my case histories in the reception office on the ground floor
just off the veranda. Both window and curtain behind my back were
up about ten inches to let in the cool, moist air. Abruptly I had a feel-
ing that eyes were staring at me. I could not have explained why ; I
had heard no sound, but I was certain some human being was some-
where about. Anybody who had come on legitimate business would
have spoken. Perhaps it was another patient with a knife. Should I
sit still ? Should I look behind me ?

I turned my head to the window, and there an ugly, grinning face
with a spreading, black mustache was peering in at me. It might
have been disembodied; all I could see was this extraordinary face,
white against the inky background. It was not a patient, not anyone
in my charge. Relief was immediate and action automatic. I seized
the long window pole, twice as tall as I, dashed to the outer door, and
shooed him off the veranda. He ran for the outer gate while I bran-
dished my weapon after him.

Such instantaneous responses must have been the result of having
in childhood sent fears about their business before they could gather
momentum. Now I could usually act without having to think very

DARKNESS THERE AND NOTHING MORE 5 1

much about them or be troubled in retrospect. They were all in the
day's work of the night nurse.

Probably the fact that I was low in vitality made me more sus-
ceptible to mental than physical influences. Realistic doctors and stern
head nurses tried to keep tales of the old house from the probation-
ers, but not very successfully. When the colored patients could not
sleep they used to tell us weird stories, and with rolling eyes solemnly
affirmed they were true. One old darky woman, hearing the hoot owls
begin their mournful "too-whoo, too-whoo," would sit straight up
in her bed and whisper, "Suppose dat callin' me? Hit's callin' some-
one in dis hospital."

Again and again after the owls' hooting either somebody in the
hospital died, or was brought in to die from an accident. Reason told
me this was pure coincidence, but it began to get on my nerves.

And then stranger events, for which I could find no explanation,
followed. Once when I was making my rounds a little after midnight,
I turned into the room occupied by the tubercular valet of a member
of the Iselin family. I had expected him to be sleeping quietly be-
cause he was merely there to rest up before being sent back home to
England, but he was awake and asked for ice. I started for the re-
frigerator, which was two flights down in the cellar. But at the top
of the stairs I suddenly stopped short — "One — Two — Three!" I
heard dull, distinct knocks directly under the stairway.

Not one, single, tangible thing near by could have made those
sounds. In the space of a few seconds I took an inventory of the im-
portance of my life as compared to the proper care of my patient. I had
to walk deliberately down those steps, not knowing what might be
lying in wait for me below. As I stepped on the first tread the same
knocks came again — "One — Two — Three!"

I tried to hurry but it seemed to me that each foot had tons of
iron attached to it. The little red devils of night lights blinked at me
and seemed to make the shadows thicker in the corners. But nothing
clutched me from the dim and ghostly hall. I got down those steps
somehow and passed through the dining room into the kitchen. There
I paused again. Should I take a butcher knife with me? "No, I won't
do that," I answered myself resolutely, and started for the cellar
stairs.

52 MARGARET SANGER

For the third time came the knocking. Glancing to right and left,
my back against the dark, I crept down, reached the refrigerator,
broke off some chunks of ice with trembling hands, put them in a
bowl, steeled myself while I chopped them into still finer pieces, and
set out on the return, my feet much lighter going up than down.

I had been away only a brief while altogether, but the patient, for
no apparent cause, had had a hemorrhage, and died in a few minutes.

Many times after that I heard these nocturnal sounds, usually
overhead. They began to seem more like footsteps — "tap, tap, tap,
tap," — very quick and a bit muffled. Soon I was not sleeping well in
the daytime.

One morning I asked at breakfast table, "Who was walking around
last night?"

"I wasn't." "Not I." "Certainly not me," came a chorus. "What
makes you think someone was up?"

"I distinctly heard footsteps the full length of the third floor."

"What time?"

"Around four o'clock."

But nobody admitted to having been up. "Then one of you must
have been walking in your sleep," I insisted.

The nurse who had preceded me on night duty timidly contributed,
"I always heard somebody. I didn't want to say anything about it
for fear you'd think I was queer."

Towards morning of the very next night when I was in the sec-
ond floor ward, I heard the patter again above my head. I ran up-
stairs to the nurses' quarters as fast as I could and looked down the
corridor. Every door was tight shut. I tore down two flights to the
first floor. The noise came once more above me. Back to the second
floor. All patients were in their beds. I asked the only wakeful one,
"Did you get up just now ?"

"No."

"Did anybody else get up?"

"No."

Some nights went by quietly. But I heard the noises often enough
to become truly concerned for fear I might be imagining things. I
said to one of the older nurses, "I'm going to wake you up and see
whether you hear them too."

DARKNESS THERE AND NOTHING MORE 53

"I'll sit up with you," she offered.

"No, I'll call you. They never come until almost morning."

The next time, at the first tap, I hurried to her room, shook her
awake, led her to the floor below, "There, do you hear it?"

Her expression was confirmation enough.

Leaving her I raced down another flight, and waited. In a mo-
ment the "Tap, tap, tap, tap" came again from overhead. Up I went.
She said she had heard it all right but it had come from over her
head. At least my senses were not playing me tricks. My accounts
were given greater credence, and other nurses sometimes interrupted
their slumbers to listen.

One of my companions told a young and intelligent doctor on the
staff that I had better be taken off night duty before I had a nervous
breakdown. Though he thought this was girlish nonsense, he could
see I was being seriously affected, and anyhow the strain of three
continuous months at such a hard task was far too much. Another
nurse relieved me.

After my second glandular operation I was placed in one of the
private rooms on the upper floor. I had not come through very well,
and this same doctor remained in the hospital all night to be on call.
Being restless, I woke up, only to hear the identical noises which had
haunted me for so long. I called him and exclaimed, "There it is.
Don't you hear it?"

He did, but confidently he strode upstairs to the nurses' floor. I
knew he would find nothing. When he came back, I asked, "Did you
see anyone?"

"No. Apparently everybody was asleep. I looked in all the rooms."

Immediately the raps came again. He moved a little faster to get
downstairs. In a few minutes he put his head back in the door.
"You're in bed? You haven't been up?" I assured him I had not
moved, knowing well he must have heard them as always I had,
from above.

Though still believing somebody was walking around the place,
the doctor by this time was determined to get to the bottom of the
mystery, and returned every night for a week. But the sound was a
will-o'-the-wisp. He never could catch up with it. He was so eager
to exhaust every possibility that he even brought the matter be-

54 MARGARET SANGER

fore the board. One of them patronizingly explained that it was
probably the echo from some rat in the walls ; they were in the habit
of dismissing thus lightly the superstitions which clung about the old
house.

The doctor continued his detective work until one day he appeared
in great good humor. From the rear windows he pointed to the roof
which rose beyond the high back wall. "I've found it. That stable is
built on the same timbers as this house. When some horse grows
restless towards morning he stamps and the vibration is carried
through them underground to this building. Now do you believe in
ghosts ?"

Life was by no means so serious as all this sounds. Amelia had
followed me into the hospital and we continued our gay times to-
gether. For that matter nursing itself often presented amusing as-
pects. The supply of registered nurses was very small, and in our last
year of training we were sent out on private cases, thus seeing both
the highlights and lowlights of life, which prepared us well in ex-
perience.

One which had romantic overtones took place immediately after
Howard Willett had transferred his house-party from Aiken, South
Carolina, to Gedney Farms Manor in White Plains. The indisposition
of young Eugene Sugney Reynal was pronounced scarlet fever. The
contagion began spreading among the guests and servants, and Dr.
Julius Schmid, old and honored, a noteworthy figure in the com-
munity and also our chief of staff, detailed three of us nurses for
service there, practically turning the place into a hospital for five
weeks.

My special charge was Adelaide Fitzgerald, Reynal's fiancee, but
as necessity arose we shifted around. Reynal's condition grew stead-
ily worse. One morning at daybreak when the patient was almost in
a coma Dr. Schmid sent for the priest to administer extreme unc-
tion, and said to me, "You'd better get Miss Fitzgerald and tell her
there's very little hope."

She knelt by his bed, "Gene," she called to him, "Gene, we're going
to be married — right now."

Reynal was as near death as a man could be, but her voice reached
into his subconscious and summoned him back. Another nurse and I,

DARKNESS THERE AND NOTHING MORE 55

hastily called upon to act as bridesmaids, stood in starched and rus-
tling white beside the bed. It was extraordinary to watch; Reynal
seemed to shake himself alive until he was conscious enough to re-
spond "I do" to the priest who had arrived to perform quite a differ-
ent office.

As an anti-climax to all the excitement, and to my intense disgust,
j I myself came down with a mild attack of scarlet fever. I was so em-
barrassed that I went right on working and did not take to my bed
until I actually began to peel.

My usual cases offered drama of another sorts Often I was called
in the middle of the night on a maternity case, perhaps ten miles
away from the hospital, vwhere I had to sterilize the water and boil
the forceps over a wood fire in the kitchen stove while the doctor
scrubbed up as best he could. , Many times labor terminated before
he could arrive and I had to perform the delivery by myself.

To see a baby born is one of the greatest experiences that a human \
being can have.j Birth to me has always been more awe-inspiring than
death. As often as I have witnessed the miracle, held the perfect crea- I
ture with its tiny hands and tiny feet, each time I have felt as though /
I were entering a cathedral with prayer in my heart.

There is so little knowledge in the world compared with what there
is to know. Always I was deeply affected by the trust patients, rich
or poor, male or female, old or young, placed in their nurses. When
' we appeared they seemed to say, "Ah, here is someone who can tell
us." Mothers asked me pathetically, plaintively, hopefully, "Miss
Higgins, what should I do not to have another baby right away?" I
was at a loss to answer their intimate questions, and passed them
along to the doctor, who more often than not snorted, "She ought to
be ashamed of herself to talk to a young girl about things like that."

All such problems were thus summarily shoved aside. We had one
woman in our hospital who had had several miscarriages and six
babies, each by a different father. Doctors and nurses knew every
time she went out that she would soon be back again, but it was not
their business or anybody's business; it was just "natural." \

1 To be polished off neatly, the nurses in training were assigned to
one of the larger city hospitals in which to work during the last three
or six months of our course. Mine was the Manhattan Eye and Ear

56 MARGARET SANGER

at Forty-first Street and Park Avenue, across the street from the
Murray Hill Hotel, and I welcomed the chance to see up-to-date equip-
ment and clockwork discipline. My new environment was considerably
less harsh and intense, more comfortable and leisurely.

At one of the frequent informal dances held there my doctor part-
ner received a message — not a call, but a caller. His architect wanted
to go over blueprints with him. "Come along," he invited. "See
whether you think my new house is going to be as fine as I do."

The architect was introduced. "This is William Sanger."

The three of us bent over the plans. The doctor was the only one
unaware of the sudden electric quality of the atmosphere.

At seven-thirty the next morning when I went out for my usual
"constitutional," Bill Sanger was on the doorstep. He had that type
of romantic nature which appealed to me, and had been waiting
there all night. We took our walk together that day and regularly
for many days thereafter, learning about each other, exploring each
other's minds, and discovering a community of ideas and ideals. His
fineness fitted in with my whole destiny, if I can call it such, just as
definitely as my hospital training.

I found Bill's mother a lovely person — artistic, musical, and highly
cultured. His father had been a wealthy sheep rancher in Australia.
When you travel anywhere from there, you practically have to go
round the world, and on his way to San Francisco he had passed
through Central Europe. In a German town he had fallen in love
with the Mayor's youngest daughter, then only fourteen. When she
was of marriageable age he had returned for her, and it was from
this talented mother that Bill had derived his fondness for music and
desire to paint.

(Bill was an architect only by prof ession ;\he was pure artist by
temperament. Although his heart was not in mechanical drawing, he
did it well. Stanford White once told me he was one of the six best
draftsmen in New York. He confided to me his dream of eventually
being able to leave architecture behind and devote himself to painting,
particularly murals. I had had instilled in me a feeling for the natural
relationship between color and symmetry of line, and sympathized
not merely with his aspirations but was intensely proud of his work.
Some day we were going to be married, and as soon as we had saved

DARKNESS THERE AND NOTUING MORE 57

enough we would go to Paris, whither the inspiration of the great
French painters was summoning artists from all over the world.

These plans were nebulous and had nothing to do with my abrupt
departure from New York. One afternoon, about four o'clock, I was
standing under a skylight putting drops in the eyes of a convalescent
patient. Unexpectedly, inexplicably, the glass began to fall apart.
Almost by instinct I pulled my patient under the lintel of the door.
A great blast followed and pandemonium was let loose; the ruined
skylight went crashing down the stairs, plaster and radiators tum-
bled from the walls, doors fell out, windows cracked.

I rushed to the bed of the man who needed my first attention. He
had been operated on for a cataract only a few hours previously and
my orders had been not to let him move too soon lest the fluid in his
eye run out and damage his sight permanently. But he with the
other terrified patients was already on his feet.

Rounding up all those under my care and checking their names
took several minutes, and while I was still trying to quiet them, am-
bulances from other hospitals came clanging up. By the time I had
ushered my charges down to the ground floor, a way had been cleared
through the debris of fallen brick and wood. Since mine were not
stretcher cases I was able to crowd ten of them into one ambulance,
and we were taken to the New York Hospital. Not until I had them
all safely installed did I learn what had happened to our building. A
tremendous explosion in the new Park Avenue subway had prac-
tically demolished it, and it had to be evacuated.

I returned to White Plains, where Bill came up frequently to see
me. On one of our rambles he idly pulled at some vines on a stone
wall, and then, with his hands, tilted my face for a kiss. The next
morning, to my mortification, four telltale finger marks were out-
lined on my cheek by poison ivy blisters. The day after that, my face
was swollen so that my eyes were tight shut, and I was sick for two
months; since my training was finished, I was sent home to con-
valesce.

Chapter Five

CORALS- TO CUT LIFE UPON

VfT^OR a while I stayed at Corning, and then went back to New York
X/ to start nursing in earnest. ,Qn one of my free afternoons in
August, Bill and I went for a drive, and he suggested we stop in at
the house of a friend of his who was a minister. All had been pre-
pared. License and rice were waiting. And so we were married.

The first year is half taken up with love and half with planning a
future together which is to endure forever. These dreams feed youth-
ful ambitions, but they seldom can come true in their entirety. In our
case the obstacles arose with undue speed.

I was not well. I was paying the cost of long hours in mother's
closely confined room and of continuous overwork in the hospital.
Medical advice was to go West to live,' but I would not go without
Bill, and he had a commission which kept him in New York, Ac-
cordingly, I was, packed off to a small semi-sanitarium near Saranac
where the great Dr. Trudeau, specialist in pulmonary tuberculosis,
was consulted.

Existence there was depressing. A man might be talking to me
one day, full of life and spirit and hope, and the next morning not
appear. The dead were ordinarily removed in the quiet of the night,
and the doctors made no comment. In this gloomy environment I
rested, preparing myself for motherhood. The flood of treatises on
child psychology had not yet started, and even the books on the care
and feeding of infants were few. But I read whatever I could.

58

CORALS TO CUT LIFE UPON 59

Just before it was time for the baby to be born I returned to the
little apartment on St. Nicholas Avenue at 149th Street, then prac-
tically suburban. Taking every precaution, we had engaged four
doctors in a row. Dr. Schmid had said he would perform the cere-
mony unless it came at night, in which case his assistant would have
to take charge. The assistant had provided that, if he were not avail-
able, his assistant would be on call, and this assistant had another
assistant to assist him.

When towards three o'clock one morning I felt the first thin, fine
pains of warning, Bill tried one after the other of our obstetricians
— not one could be located. He had to run around the corner to the
nearest general practitioner. Due almost as much to this young doc-
tor's inexperience as to my physical state, the ordeal was unusually
hard, but the/baby Stuart'ngiven Amelia's family name, was perfectly
healthy, strong, and sturdy. I looked upon this as a victory, although
it was only partial, because I had to go right back to the mountains.
It was a wrench to leave again so soon and at such a time, but I
could not believe it would be for long.

With Stuart and a nurse I took rooms in a friendly farmhouse
near a small Adirondack village; I did not want the baby in the
midst of sick people, and, moreover, I was not welcome at Saranac
itself, since Dr. Trudeau did not like to have in residence patients
whose illness had progressed beyond a certain stage. One of the most
important parts of the treatment was stuffing with food. I was being
filled with the then recognized remedy, creosote, and gulped capsule
after capsule, which broke my appetite utterly. Still I had to pour
down milk and swallow eggs, and always I had to rest and rest and
rest.

At the end of eight months I was worse instead of better, and had
no interest in living. Nan and Bill's mother were summoned, and
two of Dr. Trudeau's associates came to see me. They advised that
I should go nearer Saranac and be separated from all personal re-
sponsibilities.

"What would you yourself like to do?" they asked.

"Nothing."

"Where would you like to go?"

"Nowhere."

6o MARGARET SANGER

"Would you like to have the baby sent to your brother, or would
you rather have your mother-in-law take it?"

"I don't care."

To every suggestion I was negative. I was not even interested in
my baby.

The two doctors left. The younger, however, apparently not satis-
fied with the professional attitude, returned almost immediately, not
so much in a medical capacity as one of anxious friendliness. I was
still sitting in the same state of listlessness. He laid his hand on my
shoulder quietly, but I had all the feeling of being violently shaken.
"Don't be like this !" he exclaimed. "Don't let yourself get into such
a mental condition. Do something! Want something! You'll never
get well if you keep on this way."

I could not sleep that night. I had been rudely jolted from my
stupor by the understanding doctor. Obviously preparations were
being made for a lingering illness which would terminate in death.
But if I had to die I would rather be with those I loved than dis-
appear in the night as a part of the cold routine.

As the first glimmer of dawn appeared through the curtains I got
up and stared at the steadily ticking clock. It was not yet five. I
dressed quickly, then tiptoed into the bedroom where the nurse and
baby were slumbering soundly. I roused her and told her to pack
up ; we were going back to New York. She looked up in drowsy dis-
may, but obeyed meekly. The farmer hitched up his horse and we
jogged along all the way to the station in the early summer morning,
bright with sunshine and cheery with birds.

Bill was waiting at the Grand Central Terminal, quite naturally
perplexed. He had that morning received two telegrams, one saying
I was to be removed to Saranac at once, pending his approval as to
the care of the baby by relatives, and the other from me asking him
to meet me because I was coming home. I told him as best I could the
reasons for my sudden decision. Though I probably sounded inco-
herent he understood and, instead of scolding, soothed me tenderly
and exclaimed, "You did just the right thing. I won't let you die."

"And don't make me eat! Don't even mention food to me!" He
promised to let me have my own way.

At the small family hotel in Yonkers in which we settled, I lived

CORALS TO CUT LIFE UPON 6l

pretty much by myself, keeping the baby and everyone else away
from me ; I had by now learned the dangers of contact in spreading
tuberculosis. Once free from the horrors of invalidism and com-
forted by love and devotion I began to regain a normal interest in
life, and by the end of three weeks had recovered from my hysterical
rejection of food.

As soon as I was strong enough we started to explore Westchester
County for a home site. We wanted something more than a mere
house. We wanted space, we wanted a view, we wanted a garden.
At Hastings-on-Hudson we found what we sought. There on fifty
acres of hillside overlooking the river about ten families — doc-
tors, teachers, college professors, scientists — had combined to con-
struct the sort of dwellings they liked in the environment they con-
sidered best suited for their children. We too had in mind a family
and a comfortable, serene, suburban existence, and we joined this
Columbia Colony, as it was called, renting a small cottage until we
could build our own.

The other wives and I spent our afternoons conferring over the
momentous problems of servants, gardens, and schools. If we went
to town, we took the children with us, fitting them with special shoes
at Coward's, introducing them to museums, libraries, or art galleries.
Life centered around them. When Stuart and his little friends began
to ask questions, "Where do babies come from?" I collected them
and tried to answer, using the simple phenomena of nature as illus-
trations— flowers, frogs, fish, and animals. I still consider this
approach has its place with many children, although modern sex edu-
cationists may smile at this method, thinking it old-fashioned.

None of the colony played cards. Instead, the women formed a
literary club where we read papers on George Eliot, Browning, and
Shakespeare, as well as on some current authors, and we had occa-
sional political discussions. Out of this grew the Women's Club of
Hastings.

It was all very pleasant, and at first I was busy and contented. The
endless details of housekeeping did not seem to me drudgery; con-
quering minor crises was exciting. Though I was never slavishly do-
mestic, I was inclined to be slavishly maternal. Bill was a devoted
husband. He took care of me in the little ways — starting for the

62 MARGARET SANGER

train and coming back to put his head in the door and call, "It's aw-
fully cold. Don't go out without your wrap," or, if it were hot, he
offered, "Give me your list and I'll send up the groceries."

I was again leading the life of an artist's family. Bill was a hard
worker; I can rarely remember one evening of just reading together.
I did the reading and he drew or painted. But I was never quite sure
whether we were rich or poor. He possessed the finest qualities of
creative genius, and with them some of its limitations and liabili-
ties. When he was paid for a big commission he brought me orchids
and embroidered Japanese robes which I had no occasion to wear,
and filled the house with luxuries. This did not go with my prac-
tical sense. If the grocery account were long unpaid, I protested,
"They're beautiful. Thank you, but can we afford them?"

"Certainly," and out of his pocket came tickets for the opera or
theater, his chief pleasures.

"But we shouldn't," I remonstrated as I ruffled a sheaf of bills
before him.

Nevertheless, we used the tickets.

Every architect wants to embody his ideas at least once in his own
home. Ours was "modern" in its square simplicity and unadorned
surfaces of stuccoed hollow tile, even being called a show house ; peo-
ple came from afar to study it. It was designed to have a large nurs-
ery opening on a veranda overlooking the Hudson, a studio, a bath
with each bedroom, fireplaces everywhere, and one especially capa-
cious in the big library. From this room the open stairway, forking
at the lower landing with a few steps leading down into the kitchen,
reached up the wall to the second story.

The house took long to complete, but it was fun. The moment Bill
finished his work in New York he was back at it. Theoretically he
supervised at night and the builder built by day. But when an arch
did not turn out to be a perfect arch, seizing an ax, he chopped out
part of it, usually pounding his fingers in the process. The neigh-
bors, careful of their pennies, held their ears at the clatter and clamor
and exclaimed, "There goes another partition." When the con-
tractor returned in the morning he found his previous day's work
demolished. Some portions were entirely done over two or three
times.

CORALS TO CUT LIFE UPON 63

The color on the woodwork we applied ourselves by artificial light,
plumped on our knees or stretching high overhead. If the effect were
wrong, we had to match it all up again. Evening after evening we
labored on the rose window which was to crown with radiance the
head of the staircase. Far into the night we leaded and welded to-
gether every glowing petal. Our fingers were cut, our nerves were
irritated, our eyes fatigued. But tireless love went into the com-
position of this rose window which symbolized the stability of our
future. We were aiming at permanence and security, and our ef-
forts seemed to be fused into indestructible unity. It was our key-
stone of beauty.

After the tedious worrying over details we suddenly became too
impatient to wait any more, and, in spite of the raw condition of the
house, late one February afternoon of half-sleet, half-rain, a mov-
ing van pulled up to our front door. Through the semi-twilight
boxes, crates, and barrels were carted in.

The four-year-old Stuart was not well. We put him early to bed,
and Bill stirred up a roaring fire in the furnace against the increas-
ing cold. Then with hammer and claw we turned to our treasures,
which we had not seen for such a time. It was like opening packages
on Christmas morning. We had almost forgotten the tapestry Mary
had sent from Persia, the rug from Egypt, Bill's paintings. "What's
in this box? Oh, look here! See what I've found!" A flood of color
inundated us. We tried out their warmth against our immaculate
walls and floors. I was carrying my second baby and was tired hours
before I wanted to stop. As I climbed up to bed I gazed down hap-
pily on the litter below.

Some time later I heard dimly through my sleep a pounding, and
woke to realize it was the German maid at the door, crying,
"Madam. Come! Fire in the big stove!"

We jumped out of bed. Acrid smoke was in our nostrils, and we
were swept by the horror of fire by night. Bill shouted to me, "Get
right out ! I've got to give the alarm."

Away he rushed in his pajamas; there was no telephone within
half a mile. I seized Stuart from his crib, bedclothes and all. This
took only a few seconds, but the kitchen was already ablaze and
flames were leaping up the staircase. I pulled the blanket over his

64 MARGARET SANGER

head and started cautiously down, hugging the outer side. The blis-
tering treads crunched as they gave under my feet, but did not col-
lapse until I had reached the smoke-filled library.

The family across the street welcomed us in. When I had tucked
Stuart into an impromptu bed I went to watch. Not merely was the
fire engine trying to get up the icy hill, two steps forward and one
back, but the whole village was accompanying it to help organize
a bucket brigade.

The clouds had cleared and the bright moon was shining on the
strange scene. The weather had turned much colder, and the rain
had frozen into crystals which glittered on the branches of trees
and shrubbery. It was unbelievably fantastic, and in that unreal
setting the flames, as though directed by devilish intent, spurted
only through our prized rose window. I stood silently regarding the
result of months of work and love slowly disintegrate. Petal by
petal it succumbed to the licking tongues of fire; one by one they
fell into the gray-white snow. Fitting them together had taken so
long; now relentlessly they were being pulled apart. A thing of
beauty had perished in a few moments.

It was as though a chapter of my life had been brought to a
close, and I was neither disappointed nor regretful. On the con-
trary, I was conscious of a certain relief, of a burden lifted. In that
instant I learned the lesson of the futility of material substances.
Of what great importance were they spiritually if they could go so
quickly ?'t Pains, thirsts, heartaches could be put into the creation of
something external which in one sweep could be taken from you\
With the destruction of the window, my scale of suburban values
was consumed. I could never again pin my faith on concrete things ;
I must build on myself alone. I hoped I should continue to have
lovely objects around me, but I could also be happy without them.

The next day was filled with neighbors coming to condole and
offer help, and with insurance adjusters peering about and ques-
tioning. They found the too-heavy fire in the furnace had overheated
the pipes around which the asbestos had not yet been wrapped. We
lost a good deal because, although the house was covered, the in-
surance on the furniture had not been shifted to its new location,

CORALS TO CUT LIFE UPON 65

and, moreover, many of our possessions were irreplaceable, their
worth having lain in the sentiment attached to them.

A personal catastrophe may in the end prove to be a public benefit.
People in the community are brought together in sympathy, and
learn by the experience of others how to protect themselves.' After
our mischance every householder in Columbia Colony began to
look to his furnace and insure his home.

Our walls were fireproof, and much of the house could be saved,
but it was really more disheartening than complete demolition would
have been, for in the latter case we could have started to rebuild
from the beginning. I admired Bill greatly for the resolute way he
set about the painful business again. He went over every inch, here
saying, "This board is all right," and there tearing out black pieces of
charred wood. It was a dirty job, but he stuck to it. Nevertheless,
paint and stain as we would, we could not quite get rid of the unmis-
takable and ineradicable odor which clings around a burned build-
ing, almost like the smell of death.

Next summer we moved in once more. But the house was never
the same. Never could I recapture that first flush of joy.

Grant, my second son, was born almost immediately. I loved hav-
ing a baby to tend again, and wanted at least four more as quickly
as my health would permit. I could not wait another five years. I
yearned especially for a daughter, and twenty months later my wish
came true. After Peggy's birth, the doctor went downstairs and saw
Bill sitting in the library with Grant in his arms and tears welling
from his eyes.

"Why, what's the matter? There's a nice little girl upstairs."

"I'm thinking of this poor little boy. Margaret has wanted a
girl so long — now she'll have no room in her heart for him."

Bill's fears were groundless. Grant was not supplanted, but Peggy
was so satisfactory a baby that I was not particularly disappointed
when my illness cropped up again and the doctor said my family
must end at this point. I was quite content with things as they were.

Even as a little fellow, the sandy-haired, square-built Stuart was
practical, loved sports, and had a reasoning, logical mind, always
experimenting with life as well as with mechanical things. A

66 MARGARET SANGER

thorough Higgins, he had to find out for himself and prove it. He
used to stamp and scold when presented with a chore, such as mow-
ing the lawn or bringing in wood for the fireplaces, but his rebel-
lions were brief, and, when he realized the inevitable, he turned it
into a game. "Come on over," he hailed his friends. "We've lots to
do. Let's get to it ! We're going to have great fun."

The other boys, taken in by his enthusiastic invitations, also be-
lieved that mowing the lawn or bringing in wood were among the
best games invented.

Grant was more self-conscious than Stuart, and more inarticulate,
but more affectionate. He followed the baby Peggy slavishly. They
were usually hand in hand, and Grant's darkness contrasted with her
bright, blond hair. From the time she could talk they referred to
themselves as "we." Peggy was the most independent child I have
ever seen. At three she knew what she wanted and where she was
going. She was vivacious, mischievous, laughing — the embodiment
of all my hopes in a daughter.

Stuart typified the scientist, Grant the artist, Peggy the doer. It
was maternally gratifying to wonder whether they would carry
out these propensities in their later lives.

I enjoyed my literary activities along with my children, and Bill
encouraged me. "You go ahead and finish your writing. I'll get
the dinner and wash the dishes." And what is more he did it, draw-
ing the shades, however, so that nobody could see him. He thought
I should make a career of it instead of limiting myself to small-town
interests.

Both Bill and I were feeling what amounted to a world hunger,
the pull and haul towards wider horizons. For him Paris was still
over the next hill. I was not able to express my discontent with
the futility of my present course, but after my experience as a nurse
with fundamentals this quiet withdrawal into the tame domesticity
of the pretty riverside settlement seemed to be bordering on stag-
nation. I felt as though we had drifted into a swamp, but we would
not wait for the tide to set us free.

It was hopeless to emphasize the importance of practical neces-
sities to an artist, and consequently I decided to resume nursing in

CORALS TO CUT LIFE UPON 6j

order to earn my share. We had spent years building our home and
used it only for a brief while. I was glad to leave when, in one of
our financial doldrums, we plunged back into the rushing stream of
New York life.

Chapter Six

FANATICS OF THEIR PURE IDEALS

WE took an apartment way uptown. It was the old-fashioned
railroad type — big, high-ceilinged, with plenty of room, air,
and light. The children's grandmother came to live with us and her
presence gave me ease of mind when I was called on a case; my
children were utterly safe in her care.

. Headlong we dived into one of the most interesting phases of
life the United States has ever seen. Radicalism in manners, art, in-
dustry, morals, politics was effervescing, and the lid was about to
blow off in the Great War. John Spargo, an authority on Karl
Marx, had translated Das Kapital into English, thus giving impetus
to Socialism. Lincoln Steffens had published The Shame of the
Cities, George Fitzpatrick had produced War, What For?, a strange
and wonderful arraignment of capitalism, which sold thousands of
copies.

The names of Cezanne, Matisse, and Picasso first became familiar
sounds on this side of the Atlantic at the time of the notable Armory
Exhibition, when outstanding examples of impressionist and cubist
painting were imported from Europe. But there was so much of
eccentricity — a leg on top of a head, a hat on a foot, the Nude De-
scending a Staircase, all in the name of art — that you had to close
one eye to look at it. The Armory vibrated ; it shook New York.

Although Bill had studied according to the old school, he could
see the point of view of the radical in art, and in politics as well.

68

FANATICS OF THEIR PURE IDEALS 69

His attitude towards the underdog was much like father's. He had
always been a Socialist, although not active, and held his friend
Eugene V. Debs in high esteem.

A religion without a name was spreading over the country. The
converts were liberals, Socialists, anarchists, revolutionists of all
shades. They were as fixed in their faith in the coming revolution
as ever any Primitive Christian in the immediate establishment of
the Kingdom of God. Some could even predict the exact date of its
advent.

At. one end of the scale of rebels and scoffers were the "pink"
parliamentarian socialists and theorists at whom anarchists hurled
the insult "bourgeois." At the other were the Industrial Workers
of the World, the "Wobblies," advocating unionization of the whole
industry rather than the craft or trade. This was to be brought about,
if need be, by direct action.

Almost without knowing it you became a "comrade." You could
either belong to a group that believed civilization was to be saved
by the vote and- by protective legislation, or go further to the left
and believe with the anarchists in the integrity of the individual, and
that it was possible to develop human character to the point where
laws and police were unnecessary.

The mental stirring was such as to make a near Renaissance.
Everybody was writing on the nebulous "new liberties." Practically
always people could be found to support leaders or magazines, al-
though many of the latter lived for hardly more than a single issue.

Upton Sinclair was utilizing his gift for vivid expression and
righteous wrath in trying to correct social abuses by the indirect but
highly effective method of story-telling. The Jungle was a powerful
expose of the capitalist meat industry responsible for the "em-
balmed beef" which had poisoned American soldiers in '98. Cou-
rageous as he was, he was yet mistrusted by the Socialist Old Guard
as being a Silk Hat Radical who retained his bourgeois philosophy.
Furthermore, he had been divorced, and divorce at that time was
something of a scandal. Though anarchists minded such details not
a whit, Socialists were imbued with all the respectabilities; to most
of these home-loving Germans, only the form of government needed
change.

JO MARGARET SANGER

In the United States the party was trying to separate itself from
this German influence, and the standard bearer of the American
concept was the magnetic and beloved Debs. Not himself an intel-
lectual, he did not need to be; he was intelligent. Risen as he had
from the ranks of the railroad workers, he knew their hardships
from experience. Though I am not sure he actually was tall, he gave
the illusion of height because of his thinness and stooping shoul-
ders. He was all flame, like a fire spirit. That was probably why
the members of his coterie followed him so gladly.

Our living room became a gathering place where liberals, an-
archists, Socialists, and I.W.W.'s could meetl\ These vehement in-
dividualists had to have an audience, preferably a small, intimate
one. They really came to see Bill; I made the cocoa. I used to listen
in, not at all sure my opinions would be accepted by this very su-
perior group. When I did meekly venture something, I was quite
likely to find myself on the opposite side — right in a left crowd and
vice versa.

Any evening you might find visitors from the Middle West be-
ing aroused by Jack Reed, bullied by Bill Haywood, led softly
towards anarchist thought by Alexander Berkman. When throats
grew dry and the flood of oratory waned, someone went out for
hamburger sandwiches, hot dogs, and beer, paid for by all. The
luxuriousness of the midnight repast depended upon the collection
of coins tossed into the middle of the table, which consisted of about
what everybody had in his pocket. These considerate friends never
imposed a burden either of extra work or extra expense. In the
kitchen everyone sliced, buttered, opened cans. As soon as all were
replenished, the conversation was resumed practically where it had
left off.

Both right-wingers and left-wingers who ordinarily objected to
those in between loved Jack Reed, the master reporter just out
of Harvard. He refused to conform to the rule and rote of either,
though his natural inclination appeared to be more in harmony with
direct action.

Behind this most highly intellectual young man loomed an un-
couth, stumbling, one-eyed giant with an enormous head which he
tended to hold on one side. Big Bill Haywood looked like a bull about

FANATICS OF THEIR PURE IDEALS 7 1

to plunge into an arena. He seemed always glancing warily this way
and that with his one eye, head slightly turned as though to get
the view of you. His great voice boomed ; his speech was crude and
so were his manners ; his philosophy was that of the mining camps,
where he had spent his life. But I soon found out that for gentle-
ness and sympathy he had not his equal. He was blunt because he
was simple and direct. Though he was not tailor-made, he was
custom-made.

Because Big Bill's well-wishers saw so much that was fine in
him, they wanted to smooth off the jagged edges. When they tried
to polish his speeches, Jack Reed objected, saying, "Give him a free
hand. He expresses what you and I think much more dramatically
than we can. Don't try to stop him ! We should encourage him."

One of Big Bill's best friends, Jessie Ashley, was, without mean-
ing to be, a taming influence. These two were the oddest combina-
tion in the world — old Bill with his one eye, stubby, roughened
fingernails, uncreased trousers, and shoddy clothes for which he re-
fused to pay more than the minimum; Jessie with Boston accent
and horn-rimmed glasses, a compromise between spectacles and
lorgnette, from which dangled a black ribbon, the ultimate word
in eccentric decoration.

Jessie was one of the most conspicuous of the many men and
women of long pedigree who were revolting against family tradi-
tion, She was the daughter of the President of the New York School
of Law, and sister of its dean. When her brother had organized the
first women's law class, she had been his pupil and later had become
the first woman lawyer in New York City. £Ter peculiarly honest
mind was tolerant towards others, but uncompromising towards
herself. It was said of her truly that she was always in the forefront
when it took courage to be there; always in the background when
there was credit to be gained. A Socialist in practice as well as
theory, she spent large portions of her income in getting radicals
out of jail, and her own legal experience she gave freely in their be-
half. Nevertheless, her appearances at strike meetings were slightly
uncomfortable; class tension rose up in waves.

Many others were trying to pull themselves out of the rut of
tradition. Alexander Berkman, the gentle anarchist, understood them

J2 MARGARET SANGER

all. He had just been freed after fourteen years' imprisonment for
his attempt to assassinate Henry Clay Frick during the Homestead
Steel strike of 1892. His emergence had stirred anarchism up again,
and particularly its credo of pure individualism — to stand on your
own and be yourself, never to have one person dictate to another, even
parent to child.

Berkman's appearance belied his reputation — blond, blue-eyed,
slightly built, with thinnish hair, and sensitive, mobile face and hands.
He was a thoughtful ascetic, believing sincerely that the quickest way
to focus attention on social outrages was to commit some dramatic
act, however violent or antipathetic it might be to his nature — and
then suffer the consequences. He was not at all embittered by his
sojourn in jail, and had a great sense of humor, coupled with his
most extraordinary understanding of the strange congeries of peo-
ple who were about to be melted down into his glowing crucible of
truth.

Elizabeth Gurley Flynn had made the transition from Catholicism,
Jack Reed from being a "Harvard man," Mabel Dodge from being
a society matron. They all had had to get over being class conscious,
and acquire instead the consciousness of the class struggle. Berk-
man made friends with all, and when they were faced by problems
apparently insurmountable, he advised them on their spiritual jour-
ney, and supported and backed them. For this reason he was be-
loved by all who encountered his most gracious charm.

This was not the way of Emma Goldman, whose habit was to
berate and lash with the language of scorn. She was never satisfied
until people had arrived at her own doorstep and accepted the dogma
she had woven for herself. Short, stocky, even stout, a true Russian
peasant type, her figure indicated strength of body and strength of
character, and this impression was enhanced by her firm step and
reliant walk. Though I disliked both her ideas and her methods I
admired her; she was really like a spring house-cleaning to the
sloppy thinking of the average American. Our Government suf-
fered in the estimation of the liberal world when she and Berkman
were expelled from the country.

Of all the strange places for these diverse personalities to meet,
none more strange could have been found than in Mabel Dodge's

FANATICS OF THEIR PURE IDEALS 73

salon, which burst upon New York like a rocket. Mabel belonged
to one of the old families of Buffalo, but neither in thought nor
action was she orthodox. Only in the luxurious appointments of her
home did she conform.

Among the sights and memories I shall never forget were her
famous soirees at Ninth Street and Fifth Avenue. A certain one
typical of all the others comes to mind ; the whole gamut of liberal-
ism had collected in her spacious drawing-room before an open
fire. Cross-legged on the floor, in the best Bohemian tradition, were
Wobblies with uncut hair, unshaven faces, leaning against valuable
draperies. Their clothes may have been unkempt, but their eyes were
ablaze with interest and intelligence. Each knew his own side of the
subject as well as any scholar. You had to inform yourself to be M
in the liberal movement. Ideas were respected, but you had to back .
them up with facts. Expressions of mere emotion, unleashed from
reason, could not be let loose to wander about.

Listener more than talker, Mabel sat near the hearth, brown
bangs outlining a white face, simply gowned in velvet, beautifully
arched foot beating the air. For two hours I watched fascinatedly
that silken ankle never ceasing its violent agitation.

The topic of conversation turned out to be direct action. Big
Bill was the figure of the evening, but everybody was looking for
an opportunity to talk. Each believed he had a key to the gates of
Heaven; each was trying to convert the others. It could not exactly
have been called a debate, because a single person held the floor as
long as he could. Then, at one of his most effective periods, some-
body else half rose and interposed a "But — " The speaker hurried
on; at his next telling sentence came other "But — s," until finally
he was downed by the weight of interruptions. In the end, conver-
sions were nil; all were convinced beforehand either for or against,
and I never knew them to shift ground.

It is not hard to laugh about it now, but nobody could have been
more serious and determined than we were in those days.

Just before the argument reached the stage of fist fights, the
big doors were thrown open and the butler announced, "Madam,
supper is served." Many of the boys had never heard those words,
but one and all jumped up with alacrity from the floor and discus-

74 MARGARET SANGER

sion was, for the moment at least, postponed. The wide, generous
table in the dining room was burdened with beef, cold turkey, hot
ham — hearty meat for hungry souls. On a side table were pitchers
of lemonade, siphons, bottles of rye and Scotch.

Mabel never stirred while the banquet raged, but continued to sit,
her foot still beating the air, and talked with the few who did not
choose to eat.

The class contrasts encountered in a gathering there were not
unique. They were to be found elsewhere, even in matrimony. When
the wealthy J. G. Phelps Stokes married Rose Pastor, the Russian-
Jewish cigar maker, both families felt equally outraged; he was
practically sent to Coventry by his former associates and the Jews
regarded her as a renegade because she wore a silver cross about
her neck. William English Walling, the last word in Newport, mar-
ried Anna Strunsky, the last word in the Jewish intelligentsia, and
himself became a leading literary critic on the radical side.

Harvard had been turning out liberals by the dozen, and all of
them were playing hob with accepted conventions in thought. One
of these was Walter Lippmann, others were Norman Hapgood and
his brother, Hutchins. "Hutch" was then working on the Globe, a
paper which because of its broad editorial policy was preferred by
many radicals to the Call. He stood by Bill Haywood and Emma
Goldman, although he had much more to lose economically and so-
cially than the out-and-out reds.

The anarchists seldom initiated anything, because they did not
have the personnel or the equipment, but when something else was
started which appeared to have any good in it, they came right in.
This they did with the Ferrer School on Twelfth Street near Fourth
Avenue, in the founding of which Hutch, with the liberal journal-
ist, Leonard Abbott, and the author, Manuel Komroff, were moving
spirits. The object was to provide a form of education more pro-
gressive than that offered by the public schools, and its name was
intended to perpetuate the memory of the recently martyred Span-
ish libertarian, Francisco Ferrer, who had established modern free
schools in Spain in which science and evolution had been taught.

Lola Ridge, intense rebel from Australia, was the organizing sec-
retary, Robert Henri and George Bellows gave lessons in art, and

FANATICS OF THEIR PURE IDEALS 75

a young man named Will Durant was chosen to direct the younger
children, combining in his teaching Froebel, Montessori, and other
new methods. Under him we enrolled Stuart.

Will Durant was of French-Canadian ancestry. His mother had
worked hard to put him through a Jesuit seminary, but just before
taking the vows he had abandoned the priesthood. While he had
been studying he had read Krafft-Ebing and Havelock Ellis and
was prepared to acquaint New York with the facts of sex psychol-
ogy. Sitting nonchalantly to deliver his lectures, which evidenced
scholarly background and research, he advanced to his small but
serious audience practically the first public expression of this in-
timate subject.

The young instructor created rather a problem for the directors
by unexpectedly marrying a pupil, Ida Kaufman, commonly called
Puck. I remember one Saturday when she was romping with Stuart,
and my laundress said to her, "Why, you're so young to be married.
Do you like it?"

Puck replied, "Oh, I don't care, but I'd much rather play marbles."

Intellectuals were then flocking to enlist under the flag of hu-
manitarianism, and as soon as anybody evinced human sympathies
he was deemed a Socialist. My own personal feelings drew me
towards the individualist, anarchist philosophy, and I read Kropot-
kin, Bakunin, and Fourier, but it seemed to me necessary to ap-
proach the ideal by way of Socialism \ as long as the earning of food,
clothing, and shelter was on a competitive basis, man could never
develop any true independence.

Therefore, I joined the Socialist Party, Local Number Five* it-
self something of a rebel in the ranks, which, against the wishes
of the central authority, had been responsible for bringing Bill
Haywood East after his release from prison. The members — Italian,
Jewish, Russian, German, Spanish, a pretty good mixture — used
the rooms over a neighborhood shop as a meeting place and there
they were to be found every evening reading and discussing politics.

Somebody had donated a sum of money to be spent to interest
women in Socialism. As proof that we were not necessarily like
the masculine, aggressive, bulldog, window-smashing suffragettes
in England, I, an American and a mother of children, was selected

j6 MARGARET SANGER

to recruit new members among the clubs of working women. The
Scandinavians, who had a housemaids' union, were the most satis-
factory ; they already leaned towards liberalism.

Grant, who was as yet too young to go to school, whole-heartedly
disapproved of my political activities. Once when I was about to
depart for the evening he climbed up on my lap and said, "Are
you going to a meeting?"

"Yes."

"A soshist meeting?"

"Yes."

"Oh, I hate soshism!"

Everybody else was amused when the Sangers went to a Socialist
meeting. If I had an idea, I leaned over and whispered it to Bill,
who waved his hand and called for attention. "Margaret has some-
thing to say on that. Have you heard Margaret?" Many men might
have labeled my opinions silly, and, indeed, I was not at all sure
of them myself, but Bill thought if I had one, it was worth hearing.

John Block and his wife, Anita, were ardent workers for the
cause. She was a grand person, a Barnard graduate and editor of
the woman's page of the Call. She telephoned me one evening, "Will
you help me out ? (We have a lecture scheduled for tonight and our
speaker is unable to come. Won't you take her place?"

"But I can't speak. I've never made a speech in my life."

"You'll simply have to do it. There isn't anybody I can get, and
I'm depending on you."

"How many will be there?" I asked.

"Only about ten. You've nothing to be frightened of."

But I was frightened — thoroughly so. I could not eat my supper.
Shaking and quaking I faced the little handful of women who had
come after their long working hours for enlightenment. Since I did
not consider myself qualified to speak on labor, I switched the sub-
ject to health, with which I was more familiar. This, it appeared,
was something new. ; They were pleased and said to Anita, "Let's
have more health talks." 'The second time we met the audience had
swelled to seventy-five and arrangements were made to continue the
lectures, if such they could be called, which I prepared while my
patients slept.

FANATICS OF THEIR PURE IDEALS JJ

i The young mothers in the group asked so many questions about
their intimate family life that I mentioned it to Anita. "Just tne
thing/' she said. "Write up your answers and we'll try them out in
the Call." The result was the first composition I had ever done for
publication, a series under the general title, What Every Mother
Should Know. I attempted, as I had with the Hastings children, to
introduce the impersonality of nature in order to break through the
rigid consciousness of sex on the part of parents, who were inclined
to be too intensely personal about it.

Then Anita requested a second series to be called; What Every
Girl Should Know. The motif was, "If the mother can impress the
child with the beauty and wonder and sacredness of the sex function,
she has taught it the first lesson."

These articles ran along for three or four weeks until one Sunday
morning I turned to the Call to see my precious little effort, and, in-
stead, encountered a newspaper box two columns wide in which was
printed in black letters,

WHAT EVERY GIRL SHOULD KNOW

BY ORDER OF

THE POST-OFFICE DEPARTMENT

The words gonorrhea and syphilis had occurred in that article
and Anthony Comstock, head of the New York Society for the Sup-
pression of Vice, did not like them. By the so-called Comstock Law
of 1873, which had been adroitly pushed through a busy Congress

78 MARGARET SANGER

/ \

on the eve of adjournment, the Post Office had been given authority
to decide what might be called lewd, lascivious, indecent, or obscene,
and this extraordinary man had been granted the extraordinary
power, alone of all citizens of the United States, to open any letter
or package or pamphlet or book passing through the mails and, if
he wished, lay his complaint before the Post Office. So powerful had
his society become that anything to which he objected in its name
was almost automatically barred ; he had turned out to be sole censor
for ninety million people. During some forty years Comstock had been
damming the rising tide of new thought, thereby causing much harm,
and only now was his hopeless contest against September Morn making
him absurd and an object of ridicule.

But at this same time also John D. Rockefeller, Jr. was organiz-
ing the Bureau of Social Hygiene, in part to educate the working
public regarding what were politely termed "social evils." A fine
start was being made although no surveys had been completed. Lack-
ing data, lecturers had to speak in generalities. Nevertheless, to me,
who had sat through hours of highly academic exposition expressed
in cultivated tones, their approach seemed timorous and their words
disguised with verbiage. I saw no reason why these facts could not
be given in a few minutes in language simple enough for anyone
to understand.

When my series was finished it was printed in pamphlet form. I
sent a copy to Dr. Prince Morrow of the Bureau, asking for his
opinion and any corrections he might suggest for the next edition;
to my delight he replied he would like to see it spread by the mil-
lion. The Bureau had names and backing but was not proceeding
very fast towards educating working people regarding venereal
disease; the articles in the Call, on the other hand, were reaching
this same class by the thousand — yet the one which mentioned syphilis
was suppressed.

[I continued assiduously to write pieces for the Call:, One of these
reported the laundry strike in New York City in the winter of 1 91 2,
unauthorized by Samuel Gompers and his American Federation of
Labor, which claimed it alone had the right to declare strikes. To
get the details I went into the houses of the Irish Amazons, who
with their husbands had walked out without being called out, simply

FANATICS OF THEIR PURE IDEALS 79

because they could not stand it any longer. They were the hardest
worked, the poorest paid, had the most protracted and irregular
hours of any union members. One man described his typical day:
he rose at five, had ten minutes for lunch, less for supper, and
dragged himself home at eleven at night. I was glad they had the
courage to rebel, and it took courage to be a picket — getting up so
early on bitterly cold mornings and waiting and waiting to waylay
the strikebreakers and argue with them. The police were ready to
pounce when the boss pointed out the ringleaders.

This was the only time I came in contact with men and women
on strike together. I could see the men had two things in their
minds : one economic — the two-dollar extra wage and the shorter
hours they might win; the other political — the coming of the social
revolution. The women really cared for neither of these. Dominat-
ing each was the relationship between her husband, her children,
and herself. She might complain of being tired and not having
enough money, but always she connected both with too many off-
spring.

Some of the strikers thought I might help them out, but I was
not at all sure I believed either in direct action or legislation as a
remedy for their difficulties. This lack of conviction prevented me
from having the necessary force to aid them organize themselves,
and in such an emergency a forceful leader was called for. The night
of their rally I was amazed at the complete confusion. Anybody
could speak — and was doing so.

I felt helpless in the midst of this chaos, and distressed at their
helplessness. But I knew the person who could manage the situa-
tion effectively, and so I sent for Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, a direct
actionist identified with the I.W.W. Her father, Tom Flynn, a
labor organizer, was the same type of philosophical rebel as my
father, long on conversation but short on work. Elizabeth had been
out in the logging camps of the West, where she had won the com-
plete adoration of the lumberjacks. At her tongue's end were the
words and phrases they understood, and she knew exactly the right
note to stir them.

Elizabeth stood on the platform, dramatically beautiful with her
black hair and deep blue eyes, her cream-white complexion set off

80 MARGARET SANGER

by the flaming scarf she always wore about her throat. Nothing if
not outspoken, she started by saying it was folly for the strikers
to give up their bread and butter by walking out. They could achieve
their ends more quickly if they threw hypothetical sabots into the
machinery. "If a shirt comes in from a man who wears size fifteen,
send him back an eighteen. Replace a dress shirt with a blue denim.
That's what the laundry workers of France did, and brought the
employers to their knees."

The audience was being held spellbound by this instruction in
the fine art of sabotage when some of Gompers' strong-arm men
appeared, and the battle was on. They tramped up on the stage,
moved furniture and chairs about, made so much noise Elizabeth's
voice could not be heard, and finally ejected some of her sympathiz-
ers.

It was probably better in the end that the American Federation
of Labor eventually took the laundry workers under its wing, be-
cause the I.W.W. was not an organized body, but merely an agita-
tional force which scarcely had the necessary strength to lead a
successful strike in New York City. Its influence in Lawrence,
Massachusetts, was far more potent. Joe Ettor, once bootblack in
California, with Arturo Giovanitti, scholar, idealist, poet, and edi-
tor of 77 Proletario, had been stirring up the unorganized textile
strikers with impassioned eloquence. So compelling were the words
of these two that workers of seven nationalities, chiefly Italian, had
walked out spontaneously.

The accidental shooting of a girl picket provided an excuse, far-
fetched as it may seem, to jail the firebrands, Ettor and Gio-
vanitti, who were charged with being "accessories before the fact,"
which meant they were accused of having known beforehand she
was going to be shot by the police and were, therefore, responsible.
Now, the strikers had martyrs, and the I.W.W. heroes of the West
poured in to help. Bill Haywood, William E. Trautman of the
United Brewery Workers, Carlo Tresca, editor and owner of an
Italian paper in New York, contributed to put on the biggest show
the East had ever seen — parades, banners, songs, speeches.

The entire Italian population of America was aroused. These
were then a people unto themselves. For much longer than the two

FANATICS OF THEIR PURE IDEALS 8 1

generations customary among other immigrant races they retained
their habits, traditions, and language, ate their own type of food
and read their own newspapers.

Italians in New York who were in accord with the strikers de-
cided on a step, novel in this country although it had been tried
in Italy and Belgium. pThe primary reason for the failure of all labor
rebellions was the hunger cries of lhe-kabi€&; if they were only fed
the strikers could usually last out^ It was determined to bring the
children of the textile workers to New York, where they could b«
taken care of until the issue was settled. This resolution was made
without knowing how many there might be; provision would be
forthcoming somehow.

Again because I was an American, a nurse, and reputed to be
sympathetic to their cause and the cause of children, the committee
asked me with John Di Gregorio and Carrie Giovanitti to fetch the
youngsters. As soon as I agreed, telephone calls were put through to
Lawrence, and a delegate took the midnight train to make the pre-
liminary arrangements.

We found the boys and girls gathered in a Lawrence public hall
and, before we started, I insisted on physical examinations for con-
tagious diseases. One, though ill with diphtheria, had been working
up to the time of the strike. Almost all had adenoids and enlarged
tonsils. Each, without exception, was incredibly emaciated.

Our hundred and nineteen charges were of every age, from babies
of two or three to older ones of twelve to thirteen. Although the
latter had been employed in the textile mills, their garments were
simply worn to shreds. Not a child had on any woolen clothing
whatsoever, and only four wore overcoats. Never in all my nursing
in the slums had I seen children in so ragged and deplorable a condition.
The February weather was bitter, and we had to run them to the sta-
tion. There the parents, with tears in their eyes and gratitude in
their hearts, relinquished their shivering offspring.

The wind was even icier when we reached Boston, and money
was scarce. I had only enough for railroad fares and none for char-
tering buses or hiring taxis. Consequently, again we had to scurry
on foot from the North to the South Station. But, once more on
the train, great was the enthusiasm of the boys and girls, who en-

82 MARGARET SANGER

tertained themselves by singing the Marseillaise and the Interna-
tionale. All knew the words as well as the tunes, though the former
might be in Polish, Hungarian, French, German, Italian, and even
English. The children who sang those songs are now grown up. I
wonder how they regard the present state of the world.

As we neared New York I began to worry about our arrival.
We were all weary. Would preparations have been made to feed
this hungry mob and house it for the night? But I should have
trusted the deep feeling and the dramatic instinct of the Italians.
Thousands of men and women were waiting. As my assistants and
I left the train, looking like three Pied Pipers followed by our ragged
cohorts, the crowd pushed through the police lines, leaped the ropes,
caught up the children as they came, and hoisted them to their
shoulders. I was seized by both arms and I, too, had the illusion
of being swept from the ground.

The committee had secured permission to parade to Webster Hall
near Union Square. Our tired feet fell into the rhythm of the band.
As we swung along singing, laughing, crying, big banners bellying
and torches flaring, sidewalk throngs shouted and whistled and ap-
plauded.

At Webster Hall supper was ready in plentiful quantity. Many
of our small guests were so unused to sitting at table that they did
not know how to behave. Like shy animals they tried to take cover,
carrying their plates to a chair, a box, anything handy. Almost all
snatched at their food with both fists and stuffed it down, they were
so hungry.

Socialists had not initiated this fight but they were in it. Many
had come to offer shelter for the duration of the strike — perhaps six
weeks, perhaps six months, perhaps a year — with visions in their
minds of beautiful, starry-eyed, helpless little ones. Instead they
were presented with bedraggled urchins, many of whom had never
seen a toothbrush. But they rallied round magnificently; I cannot
speak too highly of them.

It was a responsibility to apportion the children properly, but I
had willing and intelligent help. The Poles had sent a Polish dele-
gate, the French had sent a French delegate, and so on, in order
that all might be placed in homes where they could be understood.

FANATICS OF THEIR PURE IDEALS 83

Luckily several families were willing to take more than one child
so that we were usually able to keep brother and sister together.
Each, before it was handed over, was given a medical examination.
The temporary foster-parents had to promise to write the real
parents, and also to send a weekly report to the committee of how
their charges were getting on. The tabulation was thorough, and
not until four in the morning did the last of us go to bed.

The next week, ninety-two more children were brought down, but
I had no part in this, because I was on a case. Hysteria had now risen
to such a height that some of the parents at the Lawrence Station
were beaten and arrested by the police. Victor Berger of Wis-
consin, the only Socialist member of Congress, asked for an investi-
gation of circumstances leading up to the walkout. Although I had
not been identified with it, he requested me to be present at the
hearings.

When Gompers testified, he literally shook with rage, and it
seemed to me he was about to have apoplexy. The mill owners
charged that the whole affair had been staged solely for notoriety
and that the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children
should step in.

Unfortunately, the witnesses for the strikers were not well-
documented. When it was obvious that the Congressional Commit-
tee was not receiving the correct impression, Berger asked me to
take the stand and describe the condition of the children as I had
seen them. Writing up statistics on hospital reports had given me
the habit of classification. I was able from my brief notes to answer
every question as to their nationalities, their ages, their weights,
the number of those without underclothes and without overcoats.
Senator Warren Gamaliel Harding led the inquiry, and I could see
he was in sympathy with my vehement replies.

The publicity had been so well managed by the Italians and their
leaders that popular opinion turned in favor of the strikers, and they
eventually won. At the end of March the little refugees, who had
endeared themselves to their foster-parents, went back to the mill
district. It was hard to recognize the same children of six weeks
before, plumped up and dressed in new clothes. In November Ettor
and Giovanitti were acquitted.

84 MARGARET SANGER

The Paterson silk strike of the next year, in which the workers
were again predominantly Italian, may have been as important as
the one at Lawrence, but it was by no means so obviously dramatic.
Paterson was a gloomy city, and, as a river, the Passaic was sadder
than the Merrimac. Though the leadership was far more cohesive,
caution was evidenced on every hand. Its chief interest to me lay
in Bill Haywood's participation. At Lawrence he had only been
one of the committee, whereas at Paterson he was in charge for
the first time in the East. Always before he had advised strikers to
"take it on the chin" and not be too gentle in hitting back. But here,
before ten thousand crowding up to the rostrum, I heard him warn,
"Keep your hands in your pockets, men, and nobody can say you
are shooting."

An American was apt to be at a disadvantage in handling for-
eigners, particularly when they felt aggrieved. They objected to his
manner of going about things, so different from their own, and he,
on the other hand, could not fully understand their psychology, and
had the added obstacle of being compelled to work through an in-
termediary in language.

At Paterson the Italian groups were not behind Bill. As soon as
he began to temper his language and sound a more wary note of ad-
vice, his once-faithful adherents repudiated him. His clarion call of
"Hands in the Pockets," which was intended to create favorable
popular opinion by proving them "good boys," had actually tied
their hands, and detectives beat and bullied them just the same. The
public was not impressed and they were resentful. They claimed he
did not have the old righting spirit he had shown when directing
the miners of the West, he was getting soft, he was a sick man. Al-
though he had actually progressed tactically and left them where
they were, from that time on he lost his power of leadership.

Following the method which had been so successful at Lawrence,
Jack Reed endeavored to dramatize direct action in an enormous
pageant at Madison Square Garden. He even had pallbearers carry
an actual coffin into the hall to pictorialize the funeral of a worker
who had been shot at Paterson. I could feel a tremor go through
the audience, but, on the whole, conviction was lacking.

The pageant was a fitting conclusion to one period of my life.

FANATICS OF THEIR PURE IDEALS 85

I believe that we all had our parts to play. Some had important
ones ; some were there to lend support to a scene ; some were merely
voices off stage. Each, whatever his role, was essential. I only walked
on, but it had its influence in my future.

No matter to what degree I might participate in strikes, I always
came back to the idea which was beginning to obsess me — that
something more was needed to assuage the condition of the very
poor. It was both absurd and futile to struggle over pennies when
fast-coming babies required dollars to feed them.

I was thoroughly despondent after the Paterson debacle, and had
a sickening feeling that there was to be no end; it seemed to me
the whole question of strikes for higher wages was based on man's
economic need of supporting his family, and that this was a shallow
principle upon which to found a new civilization. Furthermore, I
was enough of a Feminist to resent the fact that woman and her
requirements were not being taken into account in reconstructing this
new world about which all were talking. They were failing to con-
sider the quality of life itself.

Chapter Seven

THE TURBID EBB AND FLOW OF MISERY

'Every night and every morn
Some to misery are born.
Every mom and every night
Some are born to sweet delight.
Some are born to sweet delight,
Some are bom to endless night."

WILLIAM BLAKE

DURING these years in New York trained nurses were in great
demand. Few people wanted to enter hospitals; they were
afraid they might be "practiced" upon, and consented to go only in
desperate emergencies. Sentiment was especially vehement in the
matter of having babies. A woman's own bedroom, no matter how
inconveniently arranged, was the usual place for her lying-in. I was
not sufficiently free from domestic duties to be a general nurse, but
I could ordinarily manage obstetrical cases because I was notified
far enough ahead to plan my schedule. And after serving my two
weeks I could get home again.

Sometimes I was summoned to small apartments occupied by
young clerks, insurance salesmen, or lawyers, just starting out,
most of them under thirty and whose wives were having their first
or second baby. They were always eager to know the best and latest
method in infant care and feeding. In particular, Jewish patients,
whose lives centered around the family, welcomed advice and fol-
lowed it implicitly.

But more and more my calls began to come from the Lower East
Side, as though I were being magnetically drawn there by some
force outside my control. I hated the wretchedness and hopelessness
of the poor, and never experienced that satisfaction in working

86

THE TURBID EBB AND FLOW OF MISERY 87

among them that so many noble women have found. My concern
for my patients was now quite different from my earlier hospital
attitude. I could see that much was wrong with them which did not
appear in the physiological or medical diagnosis. A woman in child-
birth was not merely a woman in childbirth. My expanded outlook
included a view of her background, her potentialities as a human
being, the kind of children she was bearing, and what was going
to happen to them.

The wives of small shopkeepers were my most frequent cases,
but I had carpenters, truck drivers, dishwashers, and pushcart ven-
dors. I admired intensely the consideration most of these people
had for their own. Money to pay doctor and nurse had been care-
fully saved months in advance — parents-in-law, grandfathers, grand-
mothers, all contributing.

As soon as the neighbors learned that a nurse was in the build-
ing they came in a friendly way to visit, often carrying fruit, jellies,
or gefullter fish made after a cherished recipe. It was infinitely
pathetic to me that they, so poor themselves, should bring me food.
Later they drifted in again with the excuse of getting the plate, and
sat down for a nice talk; there was no hurry. Always back of the
little gift was the question, "I am pregnant (or my daughter, or \
my sister is). Tell me something to keep from having another baby. I

We xannot afford another yet.

I tried to explain the (only two methods I had ever heard of among
the middle classes, both of which were invariably brushed aside as
unacceptable. [They were of no certain avail to the wife because
they placed the burden of responsibility solely upon the husband —
a burden which he seldom assumed. What she was seeking was self-
protection she could herself use, and there was none..

Below this stratum of society was one in truly desperate circum-
stances. The men were sullen and unskilled, picking up odd jobs
now and then, but more often unemployed, lounging in and out of
the house at all hours of the day and night. The women seemed to
slink on their way to market and were without neighborliness.

These submerged, untouched classes were beyond the scope of or-
ganized charity or religion. No labor union, no church, not even the
Salvation Army reached them. They were apprehensive of every-

88 MARGARET SANGER

one and rejected help of any kind, ordering all intruders to keep
out ; both birth and death they considered their own business. Social
agents, who were just beginning to appear, were profoundly mis-
trusted because they pried into homes and lives, asking questions
about wages, how many were in the family, had any of them ever
been in jail. Often two or three had been there or were now under
suspicion of prostitution, shoplifting, purse snatching, petty thievery,
and, in consequence, passed furtively by the big blue uniforms on
the corner.
' The utmost depression came over me as I approached this sur-
reptitious region. Below Fourteenth Street I seemed to be breathing
a different air, to be in another world and country where the people
had habits and customs alien to anything I had ever heard about.
There were then approximately ten thousand apartments in New
York into which no sun ray penetrated directly; such windows as
they had opened only on a narrow court from which rose fetid
odors. It was seldom cleaned, though garbage and refuse often went
down into it. All these dwellings were pervaded by the foul breath
of poverty, that moldy, indefinable, indescribable smell which can-
not be fumigated out, sickening to me but apparently unnoticed by
those who lived there. When I set to work with antiseptics, their
pungent sting, at least temporarily, obscured the stench*

I remember one confinement case to which I was called by the
doctor of an insurance company. I climbed up the five flights and
entered the airless rooms, but the baby had come with too great
speed. A boy of ten had been the only assistant. Five flights was a
long way; he had wrapped the placenta in a piece of newspaper and
dropped it out the window into the court.

any families took in "boarders," as they were termed, whose
small contributions paid the rent. These derelicts, wanderers, alter-
nately working and drinking, were crowded in with the children;
a single room sometimes held as many as six sleepers. Little girls
were accustomed to dressing and undressing in front of the men,
and were often violated, occasionally by their own fathers or
brothers, before they reached the age of puberty. *

; Pregnancy was a chronic condition among the women of this
class. Suggestions as to what to do for a girl who was "in trouble"

THE TURBID EBB AND FLOW OF MISERY 89

or a married woman who was "caught" passed from mouth to mouth
— herb teas, turpentine, steaming, rolling downstairs, inserting slip-
pery elm, knitting needles, shoe-hooks. When they had word of a
new remedy they hurried to the drugstore, and if the clerk were
inclined to be friendly he might sa^, "Oh, that won't help you, but
here's something that may." The younger druggists usually refused
to give advice because, if it were to be known, they would come
under the law; midwives were even more fearful. The doomed
women implored me to reveal the "secret" rich people had, offering
to pay me extra to tell them; many really believed I was holding
back information for money,; They asked everybody and tried any-
thing, but nothing did them any good. On Saturday nights I have
seen groups of from fifty to one hundred with their shawls over
their heads waiting outside the office of a five-dollar abortionist.

Each time I returned to this district, which was becoming a re-
current nightmare, I used to hear that Mrs. Cohen "had been car-
ried to a hospital, but had never come back,'* or that Mrs. Kelly
"had sent the children to a neighbor and had put her head into the
gas oven." Day after day such tales were poured into my ears — a
baby born dead, great relief — the death of an older child, sorrow
but again relief of a sort — the story told a thousand times of death^
from abortion and children going into institutions. I shuddered
with horror as I listened to the details and studied the reasons back
of them — destitution linked with excessive childbearing. The waste
of life seemed utterly senseless. One by one worried, sad, pensive,
and aging faces marshaled themselves before me in my dreams,
sometimes appealingly, sometimes accusingly.

These were not merely "unfortunate conditions among the poor"
such as we read about. I knew the women personally. They were
living, breathing, human beings, with hopes, fears, and aspirations
like my own, yet their weary, misshapen bodies, "always ailing,
never failing," were destined to be thrown on tjie scrap heap before
they were thirty-five. I could not escape from the facts of their
wretchedness; neither was I able to see any way out. My own cozy
and comfortable family existence was becoming a reproach to me.

Then one stifling mid-Tuly day of 191 2 I was summoned to a
Grand Street tenement. My patient was a small, slight Russian

90 MARGARET SANGER

Jewess, about twenty-eight years old, of the special cast of feature
to which suffering lends a madonna-like expression. The cramped
three-room apartment was in a sorry state of turmoil. Jake Sachs,
a truck driver scarcely older than his wife, had come home to find
the three children crying and her unconscious from the effects of a
self -induced abortion. He had called the nearest doctor, who in turn
had sent for me. Jake's earnings were trifling, and most of them
had gone to keep the none-too-strong children clean and properly
fed. But his wife's ingenuity had helped them to save a little, and
this he was glad to spend on a nurse rather than have her go to a
hospital.

The doctor and I settled ourselves to the task of fighting the
septicemia. Never had I worked so fast, never so concentratedly.
The sultry days and nights were melted into a torpid inferno. It
did not seem possible there could be such heat, and every bit of
food, ice, and drugs had to be carried up three flights of stairs.

Jake was more kind and thoughtful than many of the husbands
I had encountered. He loved his children, and had always helped his
wife wash and dress them. He had brought water up and carried
garbage down before he left in the morning, and did as much as
he could for me while he anxiously watched her progress.

After a fortnight Mrs. Sachs' recovery was in sight. Neighbors,
ordinarily fatalistic as to the results of abortion, were genuinely
pleased that she had survived. She smiled wanly at all who came to
see her and thanked them gently, but she could not respond to their
hearty congratulations. She appeared to be more despondent and
anxious than she should have been, and spent too much time in
meditation.

At the end of three weeks, as I was preparing to leave the fragile
patient to take up her difficult life once more, she finally voiced her
fears, "Another baby will finish me, I suppose?"

"It's too early to talk about that," I temporized.

But when the doctor came to make his last call, I drew him aside.
"Mrs. Sachs is terribly worried about having another baby."

"She well may be," replied the doctor, and then he stood before
her and said, "Any more such capers, young woman, and there'll be
no need to send for me."

THE TURBID EBB AND FLOW OF MISERY gi

"I know, doctor," she replied timidly, "but," and she hesitated as
though it took all her courage to say it, "what can I do to prevent
it?"

The doctor was a kindly man, and he had worked hard to save
her, but such incidents had become so familiar to him that he had
long since lost whatever delicacy he might once have had. He laughed
good-naturedly. ;'You want to have your cake and eat it too, do
you? Well, it can't be done." .

Then picking up his hat and bag to depart he said, "Tell Jake
to sleep on the roof."

I glanced quickly at Mrs. Sachs. Even through my sudden tears
I could see stamped on her face an expression of absolute despair.
We simply looked at each other, saying no word until the door
had closed behind the doctor. Then she lifted her thin, blue-veined
hands and clasped them beseechingly. "He can't understand. He's
only a man. But you do, don't you? Please tell me the secret, and
I'll never breathe it to a soul. Please!"

What was I to do? I could not speak the conventionally comfort-
ing phrases which would be of no comfort. Instead, I made her as
physically easy as I could and promised to come back in a few days
to talk with her again. A little later, when she slept, I tiptoed away.

Night after night the wistful image of Mrs. Sachs appeared be-
fore me. I made all sorts of excuses to myself for not going back.
I was busy on other cases; I really did not know what to say to
her or how to convince her of my own ignorance; I was helpless to
avert such monstrous atrocities. Time rolled by and I did nothing.

The telephone rang one evening three months later, and Jake
Sachs' agitated voice begged me to come at once; his wife was sick
again and from the same cause! \For a wild moment I thought of
sending someone else, but actually, of course, I hurried into my uni-
form, caught up my bag, and started out. All the way I longed for a
subway wreck, an explosion, anything to keep me from having to
enter that home again. But nothing happened, even to delay me. I
turned into the dingy doorway and climbed the familiar stairs once
more. The children were there, young little things.

Mrs. Sachs was in a coma and died within ten minutes., I folded I
her still hands across her breast, remembering how they had pleaded

92 MARGARET SANGER

with me, begging so humbly for the knowledge which was her right.
I drew a sheet over her pallid face. Jake was sobbing, running his
hands through his hair and pulling it out like an insane person. Over
and over again he wailed, "My God ! My God ! My God !"

I left him pacing desperately back and forth, and for hours I my-
self walked and walked and walked through the hushed streets.
When I finally arrived home and let myself quietly in, all the house-
hold was sleeping. I looked out my window and down upon the
dimly lighted city. Its pains and griefs crowded in upon me, a mov-
ing picture rolled before my eyes with photographic clearness:
women writhing in travail to bring forth little babies; the babies
themselves naked and hungry, wrapped in newspapers to keep them
from the cold; six-year-old children with pinched, pale, wrinkled
faces, old in concentrated wretchedness, pushed into gray and fetid
cellars, crouching on stone floors, their small scrawny hands scut-
tling through rags, making lamp shades, artificial flowers; white
coffins, black coffins, coffins, coffins interminably passing in never-
ending succession. The scenes piled one upon another on another.
I could bear it no longer.

As I stood there the darkness faded. The sun came up and threw
its reflection over the house tops. It was the dawn of a new day
in my life also. The doubt and questioning, the experimenting and
trying, were now to be put behind me. ft knew I could not go back
merely to keeping people alive. ,

> I went to bed, knowing that no matter what it might cost, I was
finished with palliatives and superficial cures ; I was resolved to seek
out the root of evil, to do something to change the destiny of

mothers whose miseries were vast as the sky.

Chapter Eight

I HAVE PROMISES TO KEEP

HOW were mothers to be saved? I went through many revolv-
ing doors, looked around, and, not finding what I was seek-
ing, came out again. I talked incessantly to everybody who seemed
to have social welfare at heart. Progressive women whom I con-
sulted were thoroughly discouraging. "Wait until we get the vote.
Then we'll take care of that," they assured me. I tried the Social-
ists. Here, there, and everywhere the reply came, "Wait until women
have more education. Wait until we secure equal distribution of
wealth." Wait for this and wait for that. Wait! Wait! Wait!

Having no idea how powerful were the laws which laid a
blanket of ignorance over the medical profession as well as the laity,
I asked various doctors of my acquaintance, "Why aren't physicians
doing something?"

"The people you're worrying about wouldn't use contraception
if they had it; they breed like rabbits. And, besides, there's a law
against it."

"Information does exist, doesn't it?"

"Perhaps, but I doubt whether you can find it. Even if you do,
you can't pass it on. Comstock'll get you if you don't watch out."

In order to ascertain something about this subject which was
so mysterious and so unaccountably forbidden, I spent almost a
year in the libraries — the Astor, the Lenox, the Academy of Medi-
cine, the Library of Congress, and dozens of others. Hoping that

93

94 MARGARET SANGER

psychological treatises might inform me, I read Auguste Forel
and Iwan Block. At one gulp I swallowed Havelock Ellis' Psychol-
ogy of Sex, and had psychic indigestion for months thereafter. I
was not shocked, but this mountainous array of abnormalities made
me spiritually ill. So many volumes were devoted to the exceptional,
and so few to the maladjustments of normal married people, which
were infinitely more numerous and urgent.

I read translations from the German in which women were ad-
vised to have more children because it could be proved statistically
that their condition was improved by childbearing! The only article
on the question I could discover in American literature was in the
Atlantic Monthly by Edward Alsworth Ross of the University of
Wisconsin, who brought to the attention of his readers the decline
of the birth rate among the upper and educated classes and the in-
crease among the unfit, the consequences of which were sure to be
race suicide.

The Englishman, Thomas Robert Malthus, remained little more
than a name to me, something like Plato or Henry George. Father
had talked about him, but he meant mostly agriculture — wheat and
food supplies in the national sense. Possibly he had a philosophy but
not, to me, a live one. He had been put away on a shelf and, in my
mind, had nothing to do with the everyday human problem. I was
not looking for theories. What I desired was merely a simple method
of contraception for the poor.

The pursuit of my quest took me away from home a good deal.
The children used to come in after school and at once hunt for me.
"Where's mother?" was the usual question. If they found me at my
mending basket they all leaped about for joy, took hands and danced,
shouting, "Mother's home, mother's home, mother's sewing." Sew-
ing seemed to imply a measure of permanence.

I, too, wanted to drive away the foreboding barrier of separation
by closer contact with them. I wanted to have them solely to myself,
to feed, to bathe, to clothe them myself. I had heard of the clean,
wind-swept Cape Cod dunes, which appeared to be as far from the
ugliness of civilization as I could get. Socialism, anarchism, syndi-
calism, progressivism — I was tired of them all. At the end of the
spring, thoroughly depressed and dissatisfied, I tucked the children

I HAVE PROMISES TO KEEP 95

under my arms, boarded a Fall River boat, and sailed off, a pioneer
to Provincetown.

In 191 3 the tip of the Cape was nothing but a fishing village with
one planked walk which, I was told, had been paid for by Congress.
Up and down its length the bellman, the last of the town criers,
walked, proclaiming the news.

At first we lived in the upper story of a fisherman's house right
on the water. After he went out in the morning, his wife and her
children, and I and mine, were left alone. Then the old women
recalled scenes from their early days on the whaling vessels. Their
mothers had brought them forth unaided, and their own sons, in
turn, had been born on the ships and apprenticed to their husbands.
They fitted into life simply, but the younger Portuguese, who were
taking over the fishing industry, were asking what they should do
about limiting their families.

The village was rather messy and smelled of fish. I was still too
close to humanity and wanted to be more alone, so we moved to the
extreme end of town. Our veranda faced the Bay, and when the
tide was high the water came up and lapped at the piles on which
the cottage was built. Stuart, Grant, and Peggy used to sit on the
steps and dabble their toes. At low tide they had two miles of beach
on which to skip and run; it was a wonderful place to play, and all
summer we had sunrise breakfasts, sunset picnics.
^ Ethel, who had married Jack Byrne, was now widowed and had
also gone into nursing. She had considerable free time and stayed
with me. Consequently, I was able to leave the children in her care
when I made my expeditions to Boston's far-famed public library,
taking the Dorothy Bradford at noon, and coming back the next
day. Even there I found no information more reliable than that ex-
changed by back- fence gossips in any small town.

I spent the entire season at Provincetown, groping for knowl-
edge, classifying all my past activities in their proper categories,
weighing the pros and cons of what good there was in them and
also what they lacked. It was a period of gestation. Just as you give
birth to a child, so you can give birth to an idea.

Between interims of brooding and playing with the children I
took part in the diversions of the minute colony of congenial peo-

g6 MARGARET SANGER

pie. Charles Hawthorne had a school of painting, and Mary Heaton
Vorse with her husband, Joseph O'Brien, were there; so also were
Hutch Hapgood and Neith Boyce. Jessie Ashley had lifted Big
Bill Haywood out of the slough of the Paterson strike and brought
him down to rest and recuperate.

Big Bill was one of the few who saw what I was aiming at, al-
though fearful that my future might involve the happiness of my
children. Even he did not feel that the small- family question was
significant enough to be injected into the labor platform. Neverthe-
less, as we rambled up and down the beach he came to my aid with
that cheering encouragement of which I was so sorely in need. He
never wasted words in advising me to "wait." Instead, he suggested
that I go to France and see for myself the conditions resulting
from generations of family limitation in that country. This struck
me as a splendid idea, because it would also give Bill Sanger a chance
to paint instead of continuing to build suburban houses.
r The trip to Europe seemed so urgent that no matter what sacrifices
had to be made, we decided to make them when we came to them.
In the fall we sold the house at Hastings, gave away some of our
furniture and put the rest in storage. Although we did not realize
it at the time, our gestures indicated a clean sweep of the past.

Anita Block proposed that we go via Scotland ; she wanted me to
write three or four articles on what twenty-five years of municipal
ownership in Glasgow had done for women and children. Socialists
were talking about how everything there belonged to the people
themselves and had earned their own way — banks, schools, homes,
parks, markets, art galleries, museums, laundries, bath houses, hos-
pitals, and tramways. The city was about to pay off the last debt
on the transportation system, and this was being hailed as a great
victory, a perfect example of what Socialism could do. It sounded
big and fine, and I, too, was impressed. Certainly in Glasgow, I
thought, I should find women walking hand in hand with men, and
children free and happy.

In October the Sangers sailed from Boston on a cabin boat, little
and crowded, and one black night two weeks later steamed up the
Clyde. The naval program of 191 3 was causing every shipyard to
run double shifts, and the flare and glare against the somber dark

I HAVE PROMISES TO KEEP 97

was like fairyland — giant, sparkling starlights reaching from the
horizon into the sky, a beautiful introduction to Utopia.

The very next day I started out upon my investigationsj To mind
the children, aged nine, five, and three, I availed myself of a sort
of employment bureau run by the Municipal Corporation. I had
been told that anyone could call here for any imaginable type of
service. In response to my summons, there promptly arrived at my
door, standing straight and machine-like, a small boy in a buttons
uniform, with chin strap holding his cap on the side of his head.
Willie MacGuire's stipend was to be twelve cents an hour, or fifty
cents for the half day. His function was to take the three out, en-
tertain them, and return them faithfully at any time designated.
Though he was no bigger than Stuart, his efficient manner reas-
sured me, and I soon learned that he performed his duties diligently.

Religiously I made the rounds of all the social institutions, and
at first everything appeared as I had been led to expect — except the
weather. It had always just rained, and, when the sun did show itself,
it was seldom for long enough to dry up the walks. Though the
streets were clean, they were invariably wet and damp, and nobody
wore rubbers. Everywhere could be seen little girls down on their
knees, scrubbing the door-steps in front of the houses, or, again,
carrying huge bundles or baskets of groceries to be delivered at the
homes of the buyers. The people themselves seemed cold and rigid,
as dismal as their climate. Only the policemen had a sense of humor.

As I proceeded, flaws in the vaunted civic enterprises began to
display themselves. Glasgow had its show beauty spots, but even
the model tenements were not so good as our simplest, lower-middle-
class apartment buildings. One had been constructed for the accom-
modation of "deserving and respectable widows and widowers be-
longing to the working class" having one or more children with
no one to care for them while the parents were away. But the build-
ing had been turned over to the exclusive use of widowers. Widows
and their children had to shift for themselves.

All tenements were planned scientifically on the basis of so many
cubic feet of air and so much light per so many human beings, rang-
ing from quarters for two to those for five. No overcrowding was
allowed.

98 MARGARET SANGER

"Well," I asked, "what happens when there are five or six chil-
dren?"

"Oh, they can't live here," replied the superintendent. "They must
go elsewhere."

"But where?"

Conversation ceased.

With particular attention I traced the adventures of one family
which had expanded beyond the three-child limit. The parents had first
moved over to the fringes of the city, and thereafter as more chil-
dren were born had traveled from place to place, progressively more
dingy, more decrepit. They now had nine and were inhabiting a hovel
in the shipbuilding slums, unimaginably filthy and too far from the
splendid utilities ever to enjoy them.

The further I looked, the greater grew the inconsistency. The
model markets carried chiefly wholesale produce, and the really poor,
who were obliged to huddle on the far side of the city, contented
themselves with bread and tea and were thankful to have it. An-
other disappointment was the washhouses, dating from 1878 when
they had been deemed a public necessity because men had protested
they were being driven from their homes by washing which, on ac-
count of the incessant rain, seemed to hang there forever. A stall
cost only twopence an hour, less expensive than heating water at
home, and there were always women waiting in line. But the tram
system, which was on the point of being liquidated in spite of its
low fares, forbade laundry baskets, and, consequently, those who
were not within walking distance — and they were the ones who
needed it most — were deprived of its use.

Throughout the slum section I saw drunken, sodden women
whose remaining, snag-like teeth stuck down like fangs and pro-
truded from their sunken mouths. When I asked one of the execu-
tive officers of the corporation why they were so much more de-
graded than the men, he replied, "Oh, the women of Glasgow are
all dirty and low. They're hopeless."

"But why should this be?" I persisted.

His only answer was, "It's their own fault."

Bill and I walked about late at night, overwhelmed by the un-
speakable poverty. The streets were filled with fighting, shiftless beg-

I HAVE PROMISES TO KEEP 99

gars. Hundreds of women were abroad, the big shawls over their
heads serving two purposes: one, to keep their shoulders warm;
the other, to wrap around the baby which each one carried. It was
apparent that their clothing consisted only of a shawl, a petticoat,
a wrapper, and shoes. Older children were begging, "A ha'penny
for bread, Missus, a ha'penny for bread."

It was infinitely cold, dreary, and disappointing — so much talk
about more wages and better subsistence, and here the workers had
it and what were they getting? — a little more light, perhaps, a few
more pennies a day, the opportunity to buy food a little more
cheaply, a few parks in which they could wander, a bank where
their money earned a fraction more interest. But as soon as they
passed beyond the border of another baby, they were in exactly the
same condition as the people beyond the realm of municipal control.

Municipal ownership was one more thing to throw in the discard.

One dull, rainy day, glad to leave behind the shrill, crying voices
of the beggars of Glasgow, we boarded a horrid cattle boat bound
for Antwerp. The children were all seasick as we bounced and tossed
over the North Sea. It was something of a job to handle the three
of them with no nurse, especially when the storm threw them out
of their beds on to the cabin vfloor. Fortunately they suffered no
fractures, although twenty-six horses in the hold had to be shot
because their legs had been broken.

We arrived at the Gare du Nord in Paris at the end of another
dismal, bewildering day — toot-toot ! steam, luggage, brusque snatch-
ing by blue-smocked, black-capped porters, all looking like villains,
jam at the ticket gate, rackety taxi to a hotel on the Left Bank.

Paris seemed another Glasgow, more like a provincial village than
a great metropolis. The atmosphere of petty penury destroyed my
dreams of Parisian gaiety and elegance; even the French children
were dressed in drab, gloomy, black aprons. Within a few days
we had sub-let an apartment on the Boulevard St. Michel across
from the Luxembourg Gardens where Grant and Peggy could play.
It was four flights up, and the cold penetrated to the marrow of our
bones. We could put tons of briquets into the little fireplaces and
never get any heat. All the family went into flannel underwear, the
first since my early childhood.

IOO MARGARET SANGER

I presented Stuart to the superintendent of the district lycee. He
demanded a birth certificate, and I had none.

"But without it how can I tell where he was born or how old he
is?" The official seemed to imply that Stuart did not exist.

"But," I protested, "here he is. He's alive."

"No, no, Madame ! The law says you must have a birth certificate."

I had to send him to a private school, which was something of
a drain on the budget.

Bill found a studio on Montparnasse, just back of the Station.
Again and again he came home aglow with news of meeting the
great Matisse and other revolutionary painters barely emerging from
obscurity. I trailed around to studios and exhibits occasionally, but
I was trying to become articulate on my own subject, and paid scant
attention to those who loomed up later as giants in the artistic world.
The companionship of Jessie Ashley and Bill Haywood, who had
just come to Paris, was more familiar to me.

I was also eager to encounter French people and discover their
points of view. One of the first was Victor Dave, the last surviving
leader of the French Commune of 1871. Thanksgiving Day we
had a little dinner party and invited American friends to greet him.
He was then over eighty, but still keen and active. As the evening
wore on we started him talking about his past experiences and he
held us enthralled until way into the morning, when we all had
breakfast in the apartment.

The old Communard spoke English far better than any of us
spoke French. He was now making three dollars a week by his
linguistic abilities, because he was the sole person the Government
could call upon not only for the language but the dialects of the
Balkans. Just the day before he had been translating a new series of
treaties which France was making with the Balkan States in a des-
perate attempt to tie them to the Triple Entente. Though he was
a philosophical person who could be gay over his own hardships,
his confidences to us were serious and sad. From the agreements
then being drawn up, particularly those with Rumania, he could see
nothing but war ahead, predicting definitely that within five years
all nations would be at each other's throats. We newcomers to Eu-
rope could not grasp the meaning of his words, and the residents

I HAVE PROMISES TO KEEP IOI

shrugged their shoulders and said, "He is getting old. He cannot
see that we are now beyond war, that people are too intelligent ever
to resort to it again."

As I look back it is apparent that we heard in France the whole
rumblings of the World War. Unrest was in the air as it had been
in the United States, but with a difference. Theaters were showing
anti-German plays, revanche placards decorated Napoleon's tomb
in the Invalides, and the rusty black draperies around the shrouded
statue of Strasbourg in the Place de la Concorde pointed a macabre
note. These were remembered afterwards; at the time they were
merely part of the Paris scene.

I realized the disadvantage of not being better acquainted with
the French language, and started in to practice what I knew and
learn more. Good fortune brought me in touch with an English-
woman, the wife of the editor of L'Humanite, the organ of the Con-
federation Generate de Travail, the famous C.G.T. To her I clung
and at her home I met the Socialist leader, Jean Jaures. His English
was bad and my French worse; we had to have an interpreter.
Doubtless we missed a lot, but even so we found we understood
each other. I believe that his assassination on the eve of the war
which he had done so much to prevent proved an irreparable loss
to the cause of peace.

In my language difficulties Jessie Ashley's fluency was an ever-
present help. Together we used to eat in the restaurants frequented
by laborers, who came in groups, keeping their caps on, enjoying the
cheap and good food accompanied by wine. Often we were the only
women in the place, always excepting the inevitable cashier.

Though women were rarely seen at a C.G.T. meeting, Victor
Dave took Jessie and me to a particularly impressive one which Bill
Haywood was to address. His reputation as a firebrand had preceded
him, and the police were making certain that no riot should ensue;
they were stopping each person who crossed the bridge and de-
manding an account of his destination. Our passport was the vener-
able appearance of our escort, whose long white hair hung low
about his head. His top hat, that universal badge of respectability,
let us through.

The vast auditorium was filled with some three thousand French

102 MARGARET SANGER

syndicalists, similar to the American I.W.W.'s, all standing, all wear-
ing the uniform of the proletariat — black- visored caps and loose
corduroys. They were being urged not to take up arms against the
workers of other nations. I began to wonder whether perhaps the
various tokens of disquiet which had impalpably surrounded me
since coming to France had some more desperate meaning than we
in America had realized. The War, What For? discussions in New
York had seemed only a part of the evening conversations. Here again
I was listening to protests against government efforts to arouse na-
tional hatred by calling it patriotism. I had heard the words so often,
" Workers of the World, Unite," yet at last I was vaguely uneasy be-
cause of the difference in spirit.

As we emerged into the narrow, alley-like street we found the
exits into the boulevard guarded by hundreds of gendarmes, both
mounted and afoot. Had any outbreak occurred, the assembled syn-
dicalists would literally have been trapped.

My uneasiness was increased as a result of a visit to the Hindu
nationalist, Shyamaji Krishnavarma. In England he had been an
agitator for Indian Home Rule and, when the London residence
of the Viceroy of India had been bombed, with other Indians who
might have been implicated, he had fled to France, so long the
sanctuary for anyone who, because of political beliefs, got into
trouble elsewhere. Krishnavarma was now editing the Indian So-
ciologist, which was being secretly spirited across the Channel.

Krishnavarma had asked whether he might be permitted to give
a reception in my honor. No Hindu had ever given a reception in
my honor. Trying to appear, however, as though this were a fre-
quent occurrence, I set a time and bravely entered his salon, sup-
ported, as usual, by Jessie.

About twenty-five men were there, Indian students all, and only
one other woman, Mrs. Krishnavarma, barely out of purdah and
still in native dress. As a great concession she had been allowed to
come in, despite the presence of men. It was evident she could listen
but not speak, because, when I asked her something about her chil-
dren, Krishnavarma answered for her quickly. A little later I was
disputing a point with him and, to bolster up his argument, he gave

I HAVE PROMISES TO KEEP IO3

her a curt command in Hindustani. She rose swiftly and soon re-
turned with a well-thumbed and pencil-marked copy of Spencer. I
had come to consider Spencer's philosophy old-fogyish. His teach-
ings were so mild that I wondered what in the world he could ever
have been hounded for. Though Krishnavarma was working
towards the freedom of India he had gone no further than this
pink tea which was not even pale China, let alone sturdy, black
Ceylon.

I had been home scarcely more than half an hour and was dress-
ing for dinner when Peggy ran in animatedly. "Mother, there are
three soldiers at the door!" The bright uniforms of the gendarmes
had taken her fancy, and she was pleased and excited. When I went
out to meet them they demanded to know where we had come from,
the object of our visit to France, how long we intended to stay, in
what manner we had located the apartment, from whom we had
rented it, where I had been that afternoon, the length of time I had
known Krishnavarma, and the reason for my being at his home.
Finally, they explained their presence by saying the concierge had
not sent in the required information to the prefecture.

When I described the strange visitation to someone familiar with
French customs, I was told that concierges were all ex officio agents
of the police and were compelled to make regular reports of the
activities, no matter how petty, of their tenants. These were in-
corporated into the dossiers of all foreigners. Actually, the police,
working with the British Secret Service, were checking up on
Krishnavarma's callers. Thereafter gendarmes lingered in doorways
outside our apartment, and wherever I went I was conscious they
were in the vicinity.

Because of the predilection of the French for quality rather than
quantity, they had not only adopted the sociological definition of
proletariat, "the prolific ones," a term originally applied by the
Romans to the lowest class of society, but had interpreted it literally.
The syndicalists in particular had made what they called conscious
generation a part of their policy and principles, and had affiliated
themselves with the Neo-Malthusian movement, which had its head-
quarters in London.

104 MARGARET SANGER

The parents of France, almost on the same wage scale as those
I had seen in Glasgow, had settled the matter to their own satisfac-
tion. Their one or two children were given all the care and advan-
tages of French culture. I was struck with the motherly attention
bestowed by our femme de chambre upon her only child. She came
promptly to work, but nothing could persuade her to arrive before
Jean had been taken to his school, and nothing could prevent her
leaving promptly at noon to fetch him for his luncheon,
j When Bill Haywood began taking me into the homes of the syn-
dicalists, I found perfect acceptance of family limitation and its re-
lation to labor. V'Have you just discovered this?" I asked each
woman I met.

"Oh, no, Maman told me."

"Well, who told her?"

"Grandmere, I suppose."

The Code Napoleon had provided that daughters should inherit
equally with sons and this, to the thrifty peasant mind, had indicated
the desirability of fewer offspring. Nobody would marry a girl
unless she had been instructed how to regulate the numbers of her
household as well as the home itself.

Some of the contraceptive formulas which had been handed down
were almost as good as those of today. Although they had to make
simple things, mothers prided themselves on their special recipes
for suppositories as much as on those for pot au feu or wine.
/ All individual Frenchwomen considered this knowledge their in-
dividual right, and, if it failed, abortion, which was still common. I
talked about the problems of my own people, but they could give
me no help, merely shrugging their shoulders, apparently glad they
were living in France and not in the United States. This independ-
ence of thought and action seemed wholly admirable to me at the
time, and I sang the praises of the system.

Bill was happy in his studio, but I could find no peace. Each day
I stayed, each person I met, made it worse. A whole year had been
given over to this inactive, incoherent brooding. Family and friends
had been generous in patience. I had added to my personal ex-
perience statistics from Glasgow and the little formulas I had gath-
ered from the French peasants. With this background I had practi-

I HAVE PROMISES TO KEEP IO5

cally reached the exploding point. I could not contain my ideas, I
wanted to get on with what I had to do in the world,
j The last day of the year, December 31, 191 3, Bill and I said
good-by, unaware the parting was to be final. With the children I
embarked at Cherbourg for home.

Chapter Nine

THE WOMAN REBEL

'Oh you daughters of the West!
O you young and elder daughters! 0 you maidens and you

women !
Never must you be divided, in our ranks you move united,
Pioneers! O pioneers!"

WALT WHITMAN

THE New York was a nice ship and it was not too wintry to
walk about on deck. After the children were safely in bed I
paced round and round and absorbed into my being that quiet which
comes to you at sea. That it was New Year's Eve added to the poign-
ancy of my emotions but did not obscure the faith within.
i I knew something must be done to rescue those women who were
voiceless ; someone had to express with white hot intensity the con-
viction that they must be empowered to decide for themselves when
they should fulfill the supreme function of motherhood. They had
to be made aware of how they were being shackled, and roused to
mutiny. To this end I conceived the idea of a magazine to be called
the Woman RehA dedicated to the interests of working women.

Often I had thought of Vashti as the first woman rebel in history.
Once when her husband, King Ahasuerus, had been showing off to
his people his fine linens, his pillars of marble, his beds of gold and
silver, and all his riches, he had commanded that his beautiful
Queen Vashti also be put on view. But she had declined to be ex-
hibited as a possession or chattel. Because of her disobedience, which
might set a very bad example to other wives, she had been cast aside
and Ahasuerus had chosen a new bride, the meek and gentle Esther.

I wanted each woman to be a rebellious Vashti, not an Esther;

106

THE WOMAN REBEL IO7

was she to be merely a washboard with only one song, one song?
Surely, she should be allowed to develop all her potentialities.^em-
inists were trying to free her from the new economic ideology but
were doing nothing to free her from her biological subserv1*^11^ to
man, which was the true cause of her enslavement.
^ Before gathering friends around me for that help which I must
have in stirring women to sedition, before asking them to believe,
I had to chart my own course. Should I bring the cause to the atten-
tion of the people by headlines and front pages? Should I follow my
own compulsion regardless of extreme consequences?

I fully recognized I must refrain from acts which I could not
carry through. So many movements had been issuing defiances with-
out any ultimate goal, shooting off a popgun here, a popgun there,
and finally shooting themselves to death. They had been too greatly
resembling froth — too noisy with the screech of tin horns and other
cheap instruments instead of the deeper sounds of an outraged,
angry, serious people.

With as crystal a view as that which had come to me after the
.death of Mrs. Sachs_when I had renounced nursing forever.. I saw
the path ahead in its civic, national, and even international direc-
tion— a panorama of things to be. Fired with this vision, I went into
the lounge and wrote and wrote page after page until the hours of
daylight.

Having settled the principles, I left the details to work themselves
out. I realized that a price must be paid for honest thinking — a price
for everything. Though I did not know exactly how I was to pre-
pare myself, what turn events might take, or what I might be called
upon to do, the future in its larger aspects has actually developed as
I saw it that night.

The same thoughts kept repeating themselves over and over dur-
ing the remainder of the otherwise uneventful voyage. As soon as
possible after reaching New York, I rented an inexpensive little flat
on Post Avenue near Dyckman Street, so far out on the upper end
of Manhattan that even the Broadway subway trains managed to
burrow their way into sunlight and fresh air. My dining room was
my office, the table my desk.

A new movement was starting, and the baby had to have a name.

108 MARGARET SANGER

It did not belong to Socialism nor was it in the labor field, and it
had much more to it than just the prevention of conception. As a
few companions were sitting with me one evening we debated in
turn voluntary parenthood, voluntary motherhood, the new mother-
hood, constructive generation, and new generation. The terms al-
ready in use — Neo-Malthusianism, Family Limitation, and Con-
scious Generation seemed stuffy and lacked popular appeal.

The word control was good, but I did not like limitation — that
was too limiting. I was not advocating a one-child or two-child sys-
tem as in France, /nor did( I wholeheartedly agree with the English
Neo-Malthusians whose concern was almost entirely with limitation
for economic reasons. My idea of control was bigger and freer. I
wanted family in it, yet family control did not sound right. We
tried population control, race control, and birth rate control. Then
someone suggested, "Drop the rate." Birth control was the answer;
we knew we had it. Our work for that day was done and everybody
picked up his hat and went home. jThe baby was named.

When I first announced that I was going to publish a maga-
zine, "Where are you going to get the money?" was volleyed at
me from all sides. I did not know, but I was certain of its coming
somehow. Equally important was moral support. Those same young
friends and I founded a little society, grandly titled the National
Birth Control League, sought aid from enthusiasts for other causes,
turning first to the Feminists because they seemed our natural allies.
Armed with leaflets we went to Cooper Union to tell them that in
the Woman Rebel they would have an opportunity to express their
sentiments.

[Charlotte Perkins Gilman, the Feminist leader, was trying to in-
spire women in this country to have a deeper meaning in their lives,
which to her signified more than getting the vote. Nevertheless, at
that time I struck no responsive chord from her or from such . in-
telligent co-workers as Crystal Eastman, Marie Howe, or Henrietta
Rodman. It seemed unbelievable they could be serious in occupying
themselves with what I regarded as trivialities when mothers within
a stone's throw of their meetings were dying shocking deaths.

Who cared whether a woman kept her Christian name — Mary
Smith instead of Mrs. John Jones? Who cared whether she wore

THE WOMAN REBEL I(X)

her wedding ring? Who cared about her demand for the right to
work? Hundreds of thousands of laundresses, cloakmakers, scrub
women, servants, telephone girls, shop workers would gladly have
changed places with the Feminists in return for the right to have
leisure, to be lazy a little now and then..' When I suggested that the
basis of Feminism might be the right to be a mother regardless of
church or state, their inherited prejudices were instantly aroused.
They were still subject to the age-old, masculine atmosphere com-
pounded of protection and dominance.^

Disappointed in that quarter I turned to the Socialists and trade
unionists, trusting they would appreciate the importance of family
limitation in the kind of civilization towards which they were stum-
bling. Notices were sent to The Masses, Mother Earth, The Call,
The Arm and Hammer, The Liberator, all names echoing the spirit
which had quickened them.

. Shortly I had several hundred subscriptions to the Woman Rebel,
paid up in advance at the rate of a dollar a year, the period for
which I had made my plans. Proceeds were to go into a separate
revolving account, scrupulously kept. Unlike so many ephemeral
periodicals, mine was not to flare up and spark out before it had
functioned, leaving its subscribers with only a few issues when they
were entitled to more. Eventually we had a mailing list of about two
thousand, but five, ten, even fifty copies often went in a bundle to be
distributed without charge to some labor organization. \

I was solely responsible for the magazine financially, legally, and
morally; I was editor, manager, circulation department, bookkeeper,
and I paid the printer's bill. But any cause that has not helpers is
losing out. So many men and women secretaries, stenographers,
clerks, used to come in of an evening that I could not find room
for all. Some typed, some addressed envelopes, some went to li-
braries and looked up things for us to use, some wrote articles,
though seldom signing their own names. [ Not one penny ever had
to go for salaries, because service was given freely.

In March, 1914, appeared the first issue of the Woman Rebel,
eight pages on cheap paper, copied from the French style, mailed
first class in the city and expressed outside. My initial declaration
of the right of the individual was the slogan "No Gods, No Mas-

HO MARGARET SANGER

ters." Gods, not God. I wanted that word to go beyond religion
and also stop turning idols, heroes, leaders into gods.

I defined a woman's duty, "To look the world in the face with a
go-to-hell look in the eyes ; to have an idea ; to speak and act in defi-
ance of convention." It was a marvelous time to say what we wished.
All America was a Hyde Park corner as far as criticism and chal-
lenging thought were concerned. We advocated direct action and
took up the burning questions of the day. With a fine sense of irony
we put anti-capitalist soapbox oratory in print. I do not know
whether the financiers we denounced would have been tolerant or
resentful of our onslaughts had they read them, or as full of passion
for their cause as we for ours. Perhaps they too will have forgotten
that emotion now.

My daily routine always started with looking over the pile of
mail, and one morning my attention was caught by an unstamped
official envelope from the New York Post Office. I tore it open.

/ Dear Madam, You are hereby notified that the Solicitor of the
/Post Office Department has decided that the Woman Rebel for March,
\1914, is unmailable under Section 489, Postal Laws and Regulations.

E. M. Morgan, Postmaster.

I reread the letter. It was so unexpected that at first the signifi-
cance did not sink in. I had given no contraceptive information; I
had merely announced that I intended to do so. Then I began to
realize that no mention was made of any special article or articles.
I wrote Mr. Morgan and asked him to state what specifically had
offended, thereby assisting me in my future course. His reply simply
repeated that the March issue was unmailable.

I had anticipated objections from religious bodies, but believed
with father, "Anything you want can be accomplished by putting a
little piece of paper into the ballot box." Therefore, to have our in-
significant magazine stopped by the big, strong United States Gov-
ernment seemed so ludicrous as almost to make us feel important.
To the newspaper world this was news, but not one of the dailies
j picked it out as an infringement of a free press. The Sun carried a
^headline, " 'WOMAN REBEL' BARRED FROM MAILS." And

THE WOMAN REBEL III

underneath the comment, "Too bad. The case should be reversed. They
should be barred from her and spelled differently." <v

Many times I studied Section 211 of the Federal Statutes, under A
which the Post Office was acting. This penal clause of the Comstock I
Law had been left hanging in Washington like the dried shell of a
tortoise. Its grip had even been tightened on the moral side ; in case I
the word obscene should prove too vague, its definition had been /
enlarged to include the prevention of conception and the causing of /
abortion under one and the same heading?/To me it was outrageous w
that information regarding motherhood, which was so generally /
called sacred, should be classed with pornography .\ ^fC

Nevertheless, I had not broken the law, because it did not pro-
hibit discussion of contraception — merely giving advice. I harbored
a burning desire to undermine that law. But if I continued publica-
tion I was making myself liable to a Federal indictment and a pos-
sible prison term of five years plus a fine of five thousand dollars.
I had to choose between abandoning the Woman Rebel, changing its
tone, or continuing as I had begun. Though I had no wish to be-
come a martyr, with no hesitation I followed the last-named course.

I gathered our little group together. At first we assumed Com-
stock had stopped the entire issue before delivery, but apparently
he had not, because only the A to M's which had been mailed in
the local post office had been confiscated. \We took a fresh lot down-
town, slipped three into one chute, four in another, walked miles
around the city so that no single box contained more than a few
copies. \

The same procedure had to be pursued in succeeding months.
Sometimes daylight caught me, with one or more assistants, still
tramping from the printer's and dropping the copies, piece by piece,
into various boxes and chutes. I felt the Government was absurd
and tyrannical to make us do this for no good purpose. I could not
get used to its methods then. I have not yet, and probably never shall.

The Woman Rebel produced extraordinary results, striking vibra-
tions that brought contacts, messages, inquiries, pamphlets, books,
even some money. I corresponded with the leading Feminists of
Europe — Ellen Key, then at the height of her fame, Olive Schreiner,

112 MARGARET SANGER

Mrs. Pankhurst, Rosa Luxemburg, Adele Schreiber, Clara Zetkin,
Roszika Schwimmer, Frau Maria Stritt. But I also heard from
sources and groups I had hardly known existed — Theosophist, New
Thought, Rosicrucian, Spiritualist, Mental Scientist. It was not
alone from New York, but from the highways and byways of north,
south, east, and west that inspiration came.

; After the second number the focus had been birth control. Within
six months we had received over ten thousand letters, arriving in
accelerating volume. Most of them read, "Will your magazine give
accurate and reliable information to prevent conception?," This I
could not print. Realizing by now it was going to be a fairly big
fight, I was careful not to break the law on such a trivial point. It
would have been ridiculous to have a single letter reach the wrong
destination; therefore, I sent no contraceptive facts through the
mails.

y However, I had no intention of giving up this primary purpose.
| I began sorting and arranging the material I had brought back
from France, complete with formulas and drawings, to be issued
in a pamphlet where I could treat the subject with more delicacy
than in a magazine, writing it for women of extremely circum-
scribed vocabularies. A few hundred dollars were needed to finance
publication of Family Limitation, as I named it, and I approached
Theodore Schroeder, a lawyer of standing and an ardent advocate
of free speech. He had been left a fund by a certain Dr. Foote who
had produced a book on Borning Better Babies, and I thought my
pamphlet might qualify as a beneficiary.

Dr. Abraham Brill was just then bringing out a translation of
Freud, in whom Schroeder was much interested. He asked whether
I had been psychoanalyzed.

"What is psychoanalysis ?"

He looked at me critically as from a great height. "You ought to
be analyzed as to your motives. If, after six weeks, you still wish to
publish this pamphlet, I'll pay for ten thousand copies."

"Well, do you think I won't want to go on ?"

"I don't only think so. I'm quite sure of it."

"Then I won't be analyzed."

I took the manuscript to a printer well known for his liberal

THE WOMAN REBEL 113

tendencies and courage. He read the contents page by page and said,
"You'll never get this set up in any shop in New York. It's a Sing X
Sing job."

Every one of the twenty printers whom I tried to persuade was
afraid to touch it. It was impossible ever, it seemed, to get into
print the contents of that pamphlet.

i Meanwhile, following the March issue the May and July numbers
of the Woman Rebel had also been banned. In reply to each of the
formal notices I inquired which particular article or articles had
incurred disapproval, but could obtain no answer. | -^

At that time I visualized the birth control movement as part of
the fight for freedom of speech, flow much would the postal au-
thorities suppress? What were they really after? I was determined
to prod and goad until some definite knowledge was obtained as to
what was "obscene, lewd, and lascivious." • — -

Theodore Schroeder and I used to meet once in a while at the
Liberal Club, and he gave much sound advice — I could not go on
with the Woman Rebel forever. Eventually the Post Office would
wear me down by stopping the issues as fast as I printed them. He
warned, "They won't do so and so unless you do thus and thus. If
you do such and such, then you'll have to take the consequences."
He was a good lawyer and an authority on the Constitution.

When my^famil^-Jearned that I might be getting in deep water
a council was called just as when I had been a child. A verdict of
nervous breakdown was openly decreed, but back in the minds of
all was the unspoken dread that I must have become mentally un-
balanced. They insisted father come to New York, where he had
not been for forty years, to persuade me to go to a sanitarium.

For several days father and I talked over the contents of the
Woman Rebel. In his fine, flowing language he expressed his hatred
of it. He despised talk about revolution, and despaired of anyone
who could discuss sex, blaming this on my nursing training, which,
he intimated, had put me in possession of all the known secrets of
the human body. He was not quite sure what birth control was, and
my reasoning, which retraced the pattern of our old arguments,
made no impression upon him.

Father would have nothing to do with the "queer people" who

114 MARGARET SANGER

came to the house — people of whom no one had ever heard — turn-
ing up with articles on every possible subject and defying me to
publish them in the name of free speech. I printed everything. For
the August issue I accepted a philosophical essay on the theory of
assassination, largely derived from Richard Carlile. It was vague,
inane, and innocuous, and had no bearing on my policy except to
taunt the Government to take action, because assassination also was
included under Section 211.

Only a few weeks earlier, the war which Victor Dave had pre-
dicted had started its headlong progress. The very moment when
most people were busy with geographies and atlases, trying to find
out just where Sarajevo might be, the United States chose to sever
diplomatic relations with me.

One morning I was startled by the peremptory, imperious, and
incessant ringing of my bell. When I opened the door, I was con-
fronted by two gentlemen.

"Will you come in?"

They followed me into my living room, scrutinized with amaze-
ment the velocipede and wagon, the woolly animals and toys stacked
_,in the corner. One of them asked, "Are you the editor and publisher
of a magazine entitled the Woman Rebel?"

When I confessed to it, he thrust a legal document into my hands.
I tried to read it, threading my way slowly through the jungle of
legal terminology. Perhaps the words became a bit blurred because
of the slight trembling of my hands, but I managed to disentangle
the crucial point of the message.fi had been indicted — indicted on no
less than nine counts — for alleged violation of the Federal Statutes.
If found guilty on all, I might be liable to forty-five years in the

m m \

penitentiary. \

I looked at the two agents of the Department of Justice. They
seemed nice and sensible. I invited them to sit down and started in
to explain birth control. For three hours I presented to their im-
aginations some of the tragic stories of conscript motherhood. I
forget now what I said, but at the end they agreed that such a
law should not be on the statute books. Yet it was, and there was
nothing to do about it but bring my case to court.

When the officers had gone, father came through the door of the

THE WOMAN REBEL 115

adjoining room where he had been reading the paper. He put both
arms around me and said, ''Your mother would have been alive to-
day if we had known all this then." He had applied my recital di-
rectly to his own life. "You will win this case. Everything is with
you — logic, common sense, and progress. I never saw the truth
until this instant."

Old-fashioned phraseology, but father was at last convinced.. He
went home quite proud, thinking I was not so crazy after all, and
began sending me clippings to help prove the case for birth control
— women who had drowned themselves or their children and the
brutalities of parents, because even mother love might turn cruel if
too hard pressed.

My faith was still childlike. I trusted that, like father, a judge
representing our Government would be convinced. All I had to do
was explain to those in power what I was doing and everything
would come right.

August twenty-fifth I was arraigned in the old Post Office way
downtown. Judge Hazel, himself a father of eight or nine children,
was kindly, and I suspected the two Federal agents who had sum-
moned me had spoken a good word on my behalf. But Assistant
District Attorney Harold A. Content seemed a ferocious young fel-
low. When the Judge asked, "What sort of things is Mrs. Sanger
doing to violate the law?" he answered, "She's printing articles ad-
vocating bomb throwing and assassination."

"Mrs. Sanger doesn't look like a bomb thrower or an assassin."

Mr. Content murmured something about not all being gold that
glittered; I was doing a great deal of harm. He intimated he knew
of my attempts to get Family Limitation in print when he said, "She
is not satisfied merely to violate the law, but is planning to do it on
a very large scale."

Judge Hazel, apparently believing the charges much exaggerated,
put the case over until the fall term, which gave me six weeks to
prepare my answer, and Mr. Content concurred, saying that if this
were not enough time, I could have more.

The press also was inclined to be friendly. Reporters came up
to Post Avenue, looked over the various articles. They agreed, "We
think the Government absolutely wrong. We don't see how it has

Il6 MARGARET SANGER

any case." Unfortunately, while we were talking, Peggy, who had
never seen a derby before, took possession of their hats and sticks,
and in the hall a little parade of children formed, marching up and
down in front of the door. One of the gentlemen was so furious that
I hid Peggy in the kitchen away from his wrath. As he went out
he remarked, "You should have birth controlled them before they
were born. Why don't you stay home and spend some thought on
disciplining your own family?"

I had many things to do which could not be postponed, the most
important among them being to provide for the children's future.
This occupied much of my time for the next few weeks. Temporar-
ily, I sent the younger two to the Catskills and Stuart to a camp
in Maine, arranging for school in the fall on Long Island.

[ Defense funds were always being raised when radicals got into
trouble to pay pseudo-radical lawyers to fight the cases on techni-
calities. I was not going to have any lawyer get me out of this.
Since my indictment had not stopped my publishing the Woman
Rebel, through the columns of the September issue I told my sub-
scribers I did not want pennies or dollars, but appealed to them to
combine forces and protest on their own behalf against government
invasion of their rights. That issue and the October one were both
suppressed, i

During what might be called my sleepwalking stage it was as
though I were heading towards a precipice and nothing could awaken
me. I had no ear for the objections of family or the criticism of
friends. People were around me, I knew, but I could not see them
clearly; I was deaf to their warnings and blind to their signs.

When I review the situation through the eyes of those who gave
me circumspect advice, I can understand their attitude. I was con-
sidered a conservative, even a bourgeoise by the radicals. I was dig-
ging into an illegal subject, was not a trained writer or speaker or
experienced in the arts of the propagandist, had no money with
which to start a rousing campaign, and possessed neither social posi-
tion nor influence.

In the opinion of nearly all my acquaintances I would have to
spend at least a year in jail, and they began to condole with me.
None offered to do anything about it, just suggested how I could get

THE WOMAN REBEL WJ

through. One kind woman whom I had never seen before called late
one evening and volunteered to give me dancing lessons. In a small
six-by-four cabin she had developed a system which she claimed
was equally applicable to a prison cell and would keep me in good
health. She even wrote out careful directions for combining proper
exercises with the rhythm of the dance.

But I myself had no intention of going to jail; it was not in my
program.

j One other thing I had to do before my trial. Family Limitation
simply must be published. I had at last found the right person — Bill
Shatoff, Russian-born, big and burly, at that time a linotype oper-
ator on a foreign paper. So that nobody would see him he did the
job after hours when his shop was supposed to be closed.

At first I had thought only of an edition of ten thousand. How-
ever, when I learned that union leaders in the silk, woolen, and cop-
per industries were eager to have many more copies to distribute, I
enlarged my plan. I would have liked to print a million but, owing
to lack of funds, could not manage more than a hundred thousand.

Addressing the envelopes took a lot of work. Night after night
the faithful band labored in a storage room, wrapping, weighing,
stamping. Bundles went to the mills in the East, to the mines of the
West — to Chicago, San Francisco, and Pittsburgh, to Butte, Law-
rence, and Paterson. All who had requested copies were to receive
them simultaneously; I did not want any to be circulated until I
was ready, and refused to have one in my own house. I was a tyrant
about this, as firm as a general about leaving no rough edges.

In October my case came up. I had had no notice and, without a
lawyer to keep me posted, did not even know it had been called
until the District Attorney's office telephoned. Since Mr. Content
had promised me plenty of time, I thought this was merely a for-
mality and all I had to do was put in an appearance.

The next morning I presented myself at court. As I sat in the
crowded room I felt crushed and oppressed by an intuitive sense of
the tremendous, impersonal power of my opponents. Popular inter-
est was now focused on Europe; my little defiance was no longer
important. When I was brought out of my reverie by the voice of
the clerk trumpeting forth in the harshly mechanical tones of a

Il8 MARGARET SANGER

train announcer something about The People v. Margaret Sanger,
there flashed into my mind a huge map of the United States, com-
ing to life as a massive, vari-colored animal, against which I, so
insignificant and small, must in some way defend myself. It was a
terrific feeling.

But courage did not entirely desert me. Elsie Clapp, whose ample
Grecian figure made her seem a tower of strength, marched up the
aisle with me as though she, too, were to be tried. I said to Judge
Hazel that I was not prepared, and asked for a month's adjournment.
Mr. Content astonished me by objecting. "Mrs. Sanger's had plenty
of time and I see no reason, Your Honor, why we should have a
further postponement. Every day's delay means that her violations
are increased. I ask that the case continue this afternoon."

A change in Judge Hazel's attitude had taken place since August.
Instead of listening to my request, he advised me to get an attorney
at once — my trial would go on after the noon recess.

I was so amazed that I could only believe his refusal was due to
my lack of technical knowledge, and supposed that at this point I
really had to have a lawyer. I knew Simon H. Pollock, who had
represented labor during the Paterson strike, and I went to see him.
He agreed with me that a lawyer's plea would not be rejected and
that afternoon confidently asked for a month's stay. It was denied.
He reduced it to two weeks. Again it was denied. At ten the follow-
ing morning the case was to be tried without fail.

From the Post Office Department I received roundabout word
that my conviction had already been decided upon. When I told this
to Mr. Pollock he said, "There isn't a thing I can do. You'd better
plead guilty and let us get you out as fast as we can. We might
even be able to make some deal with the D.A. so you'd only have
to pay a fine."

I indignantly refused to plead guilty under any circumstances.
What was the sense of bringing about my indictment in order to
test the law, and then admit that I had done wrong? I was trying
to prove the law was wrong, not I. Giving Mr. Pollock no direc-
tions how to act, I merely said I would call him up.

It was now four o'clock and I sought refuge at home to think
through my mental turmoil and distress. But home was crowded

THE WOMAN REBEL IIO,

with too many associations and emotions pulling me this way and
that. When my thoughts would not come clear and straight I packed
a suitcase, went back downtown, and took a room in a hotel, the
most impersonal place in the world.

There was no doubt in my mind that if I faced the hostile court
the next morning, unprepared as I was, I would be convicted of pub-
lishing an obscene paper. Such a verdict would be an injustice. If I
were to convince a court of the rightness of my cause, I must have
my facts well marshaled, and that could not be done in eighteen hours.

Then there was the question of the children's welfare. Had I the
right to leave them the heritage of a mother who had been im-
prisoned for some offensive literature of which no one knew the
details ?

What was I to do? Should I get another lawyer, one with per-
sonal influence who could secure a "postponement, and should we
then go into court together and fight it out? I had no money for
such a luxury. Should I follow the inevitable suggestion of the
"I-told-you-so's" and take my medicine? Yes, but what medicine?
I would not swallow a dosage for the wrong disease.

I was not afraid of the penitentiary; I was not afraid of any-
thing except being misunderstood. Nevertheless, in the circum-
stances, my going there could help nobody. I had seen so many peo-
ple do foolish things valiantly, such as wave a red flag, shout
inflammatory words, lead a parade, just for the excitement of do-
ing what the crowd expected of them. Then they went to jail for six
months, a year perhaps, and what happened? Something had been
killed in them ; they were never heard of again. I had seen braver and
hardier souls than I vanquished in spirit and body by prison terms,
and I was not going to be lost and broken for an issue which
was not the real one, such as the entirely unimportant Woman Rebel
articles. Had I been able to print Family Limitation earlier, and to
swing the indictment around that, going to jail might have had some
significance.

Going away was much more difficult than remaining. But if I
were to sail for Europe I could prepare my case adequately and re-
turn then to win or lose in the courts. There was a train for Canada
within a few hours. Could I take it? Should I take it? Could I ever

120 MARGARET SANGER

make those who had advised me against this work and these activi-
ties understand? Could I ever make anyone understand? How
could I separate myself from the children without seeing them
once more? Peggy's leg was swollen from vaccination. This kept
worrying me, made me hesitate, anxious. It was so hard to decide
what to do.

Perfectly still, my watch on the table, I marked the minutes fly.
There could be no retreat once I boarded that train. The torture of
uncertainty, the agony of making a decision only to reverse it!
The hour grew later and later. This was like both birth and death —
you had to meet them alone.

| About thirty minutes before train time I knew that I must go.
I wrote two letters, one to Judge Hazel, one to Mr. Content, to be
received at the desk the next day, informing them of my action.
I had asked for a month and it had been refused. This denial of
right and freedom compelled me to leave my home and my three
children until I made ready my case, which dealt with society rather
than an individual. I would notify them when I came back. Whether
this were in a month or a year depended on what I found it necessary
to do. Finally, as though to say, "Make the most of it," I enclosed
to each a copy of Family Limitation.

Parting from all that I held dear in life, I left New York at mid-
night, without a passport, not knowing whether I could ever return.

Chapter Ten

WE SPEAK THE SAME GOOD TONGUE

>VV, ,v\\ .>V> ->V\ .VV\ .XVV ->V\ .>\\ -\V\ ,>VV AVV ,\V\ ,>V\ J

'iit 'tit Hi Hi Hi tit tit Hi it/ tit 'tit tit tit "

)

AT Montreal I found comfort and refuge. In fact, on any road
jT\. I took men and women who knew about the Woman Rebel
came to my aid. I shall never forget the generosity of the Baineses who
met me at the train and welcomed me to their home. They had been
friends of Walt Whitman and still honored "his" memory. I sat at
the table where "he" had sat, and in "his" chair. Among their many
kindnesses they gave me an introduction to Edward Carpenter, also
mentioned in awed tones, leader of the Whitman group in England
and author of Love's Coming of Age, which was then on every mod-
ern bookshelf.

Since I was charged with felony I could be extradited. I was
obliged, therefore, in buying my passage, to choose a new name. No
sooner had I selected the atrociously ugly "Bertha Watson," which
seemed to rob me of femininity, than I wanted to be rid of it. But
once having adopted it I could not escape.

I boarded the RMS Virginian, laden with munitions, food, Eng-
lishmen returning home for war duty, and Canadians going over.
Even before the printing of Family Limitation had begun in August,
I had arranged a key message which would release all the pamphlets
simultaneously whenever it should be received by any of four trusted
lieutenants. In case one should be arrested, another ill, or a third
die, still everything would go forward as provided for. Three days

121

122 MARGARET SANGER

out of Montreal I sent a cable and shortly had one in reply that the
program was being executed as planned. My soul was sick and my
heart empty for those I loved; the one gleam in this dreadful night
of despair was the faint hope that my efforts might, perhaps, make
Peggy's future easier.

The government official examining credentials at Liverpool said
sternly, "England is at war, Madam. You can't expect us to let you
through. We're sending back people without passports every day, and
I can't make an exception in your case."

But I had Good Luck as an ally; she comes so often to help in
emergencies. A shipboard acquaintance telephoned and pulled wires,
a procedure not so common in England as in the United States. On
his guarantee that I would get a passport from the American Em-
bassy immediately on reaching London I was allowed to enter.

I wound through dirty streets in a cab to the Adelphi Palace. It
rained all day, the wind blew, its howling came through the windows
and crept down the chimney. Homesickness swept over me worse
than ever before or since. I knew it would not do to "set and think"
as the Quakers say, so I wandered about in the business district, try-
ing to adjust my mind to the prices marked in the store windows in
order to have some idea of what they were in dollars and cents. I
viewed church architecture and the Cathedral, which was not ex-
pected to be finished for fifty years. It did not look so splendid, but
since everything about it was closed I really could not tell.

Liverpool was a quaint city. I liked its weathered brick houses,
and the evenness and settled feeling, as though the people in them
planned to remain where they were for time everlasting. The women
of the poor were unconcernedly wearing on the streets dresses orig-
inally made for bustles, hats with feathers, caricatures which should
have been stuffed away in attics forty years before.

Bertha Watson had a letter to the local Fabian Society, and at six
I went to the Clarion Cafe, where it foregathered each Friday. I pre-
sented her letter, was welcomed heartily, and invited to the discussion.
I found the English then and later polite in speech and action, toler-
ant in listening. One of the members helped me to locate temporary
rooms while I waited for the arrival of letters and messages from the
United States. These lodgings were in the home of gentle, middle-

WE SPEAK THE SAME GOOD TONGUE 1 23

class people to whom I paid thirty shillings a week, including break-
fast and dinner.

I shall always be glad I went to that meeting, because there I met
Lorenzo Portet, once companion of Francisco Ferrer and now heir
to his educational work, which both believed was the key to Spanish
emancipation.

After the attempted assassination of Alfonso XIII and Victoria
of England, the Government had arrested twenty-five hundred Span-
iards having republican ideas, among them Ferrer. His school had
been closed and he had been jailed. When he had been eventually re-
leased, he had still been determined to educate for universal peace
by means of economic justice. Accordingly, as Portet stated it, he
had reopened a school for all Spain by publishing labor texts at Barce-
lona. This again had earned him no reward from a grateful Govern-
ment. In 1909 he had been arrested in a purge of republicans, stood
up against a wall and shot, and his body thrown into a ditch.

Ferrer had left his money to Portet, who was now fulfilling his
trust by feeding the country with modern scientific translations from
Italy, France, and England. He was a man of middle height and
weight whose alert glance summed you up with an accuracy occa-
sionally disturbing. After our initial encounter he called on me with
punctiliousness and formality, and produced an article from a New
York magazine which carried the story of the indictment of Mar-
garet Sanger. "This is you?" he questioned with the jumping of all
fact which is termed intuition.

Portet, a born teacher, was then instructing youth at the Uni-
versity of Liverpool in Spanish. No human being I ever knew could
explain with such infinite pains the details of a subject. He placed
your own opposition before you, marshaled it in all its strength, and
then annihilated every point, one by one. His humorous cynicism was
most baffling to those who were merely emotional converts to better
worlds. "Civilization?" he might say, "Mainly a question of good
roads."

Sometimes in the midst of those long, drab, November weeks I
escaped to Wales, where there were endless lanes, winding and hard,
with very few carts, and all very quiet. Even here were Carnegie li-
braries, one of them turned into a restaurant. I went into the houses

124 MARGARET SANGER

of the smelting workers at Green Brombo, Wexham, all lovely, mi-
nute, stone cottages of two or three rooms, huddled closely together,
charming with their walks and walls and flower gardens. The folk
were slow, deliberate, simple.

Liverpool was only a junction; London was my terminus. There
I could study at the British Museum, and meet the Neo-Malthusians.
Towards the end of the month I rolled up to London through miles
of chimney-potted suburbs; it continued rainy and foggy, but still
there was a friendly atmosphere in the air. I seemed to be coming to
a second home.

My first quarters were on the top floor of a "bed and breakfast"
on Torrington Square, just back of the British Museum. I looked
out on little rows of trees, iron fences, steps going up to all the
houses. There was but one bathroom and to use it cost extra. Every
morning about seven came a knock, and when I opened the door I
discovered a midget jug of hot water outside. I was supposed to break
the ice on my large pitcher, mix the two, and pour all into my tin
tub, the back of which rose behind me like a throne. After this winter
I realized how the British had acquired their well-known moral
courage.

I had no fireplace, but two floors below was an empty room with
a grate. Occasionally I indulged myself in the luxury of renting it
for the evening, and of buying wood to keep myself warm while I
worked. I made up for it by not having the slatternly Cockney maid
bring up tea, and also went each morning to the basement dining
room for my breakfast, thereby saving a shilling a week. It was not
long before I was stricken by the first digestive upset I had ever had,
and was obliged to call in an American doctor. He looked me over
casually and then, without further examination, asked, "Have you
been drinking English coffee?"

"Why, yes."

"Well, give it up. The English can't make coffee ; they only know
how to make tea. Take up English tea."

I followed his advice and from that time on, instead of carrying
my own eating habits with me, have tried to adjust myself to the
food of the country where I happened to be. In this way I g&t along
much better,

WE SPEAK THE SAME GOOD TONGUE 1 25

Sundays I attended concerts or visited art galleries, though since
it was war time disappointingly few pictures were being shown. Each
week day, however, found me at the British Museum, going in with
the opening of the gates in the morning. In order to secure permis-
sion to work, you had to have a card, but once you obtained it, you
could take a special seat and books were reserved for you. My aim
was to present my case from all angles, to make the trial soundly his-
torical so that birth control would be seriously discussed in America.
Therefore, I read avidly and voluminously many weighty tomes, and
turned carefully the yellowed, brittle pages of pamphlets and broad-
sides, finding much that was dull, much that was irrelevant, but also
much that was amusing, if only for the ponderous manner of its ex-
pression. In the end I had a picture of what had gone before.

The father of family limitation was Thomas Robert Malthus,
born in 1766 at the Rookery, near Dorking, Surrey. In 1798 this
curate of Albury published his Principle of Population and in the
initial chapter laid down his famous postulates : "first, that food
is necessary to the existence of ihan; second, that the passion be-
tween the sexes is necessary, and will remain nearly in its present
state. . . ." Consequently the unrestrained fertility of the human
race was certain to outstrip the available fruits of the earth, and,
although the natural checks of war, disease, and privation had con-
trolled population for centuries, they had brought misery, disaster,
and death in their train. His solution was voluntary and intelligent
control of the birth rate by means of late marriage, which left few
years for childbearing. However, human nature is such that Malthus
might preach forever without anyone's heeding his advice. Not un-
til the profound economic depression which followed the Napoleonic
Wars were people worried into concern over surplus population.

To John Stuart Mill the production of large families was to be re-
garded in the same light as drunkenness or any other physical excess.
In the very first edition of his Political Economy he spoke of "pru-
dence, by which either marriages are sparingly contracted, or care is
taken that children beyond a certain number shall not be the fruit,"
and concluded that "the grand practical problem is to find the means
of limiting the number of births." But he left it merely as a grand,
practical problem.

126 MARGARET SANGER

Francis Place, the master tailor of Charing Cross, was born in a
private debtors' prison kept by his father in Vinegar Yard. He was
the first to suggest the idea of contraception as a remedy for pov-
erty, but was more practical in his preaching than in his perform-
ance, fathering as he did fifteen children. In 1822 he published Illus-
trations and Proofs of the Principle of Population:

If, above all, it were once clearly understood, that it was not dis-
reputable for married persons to avail themselves of such precaution-
ary means as would, without being injurious to health, or destructive
of female delicacy, prevent conception, a sufficient check might at
once be given to the increase of population beyond the means of sub-
sistence ; vice and misery, to a prodigious extent, might be removed
from society, and the object of Mr. Malthus, Mr. Godwin, and of
every philanthropic person, be promoted.

Place had educated himself on Adam Smith, Locke, Hume,
Thomas Paine, and Burke. To his remarkable library came many
notable thinkers and men of letters. Among them was Robert Owen,
the textile industrialist, who, in his Moral Physiology, offered openly
a method of contraception :

I sit down to write a little treatise, which will subject me to abuse
from the self-righteous, to misrepresentation from the hypocritical,
and to reproach even from the honestly prejudiced.

He spoke to young men and women who still believed in virtue
and happiness. "A human being is a puppet, a slave, if his ignorance
is to be the safeguard of his virtue." In reply to the accusation that
coitus interruptus was unnatural, he pointed out that the thwarting
of any human wish or impulse might be so termed. "If this trifling
restraint is to be called unnatural, what shall be said of celibacy?"

Owen in his youth had been impressed by the sufferings of the
working classes, and, in a first effort to lighten the burden of his em-
ployees, had instituted many reforms in the New Lanark Mills, him-
self prospering materially in so doing ; he was less successful when he
emigrated to the United States and at New Harmony, Indiana, estab-
lished a short-lived communal colony. However, his coming to
America had at least one important result. His book influenced Doctor
Charles Knowlton of Boston to write a tract entitled Fruits of Phi^

WE SPEAK THE SAME GOOD TONGUE 127

losophy in which he recommended a chemical formula and other
methods to prevent conception. I had not found a trace of this in my
previous research, even in Boston where it had been published.

Knowlton's reaffirmation of the desirability both from a political
and social point of view for mankind to be able to limit at will the
number of offspring without sacrificing the attendant gratification
of the reproductive instinct, would have been little noticed had it not
been for the repercussion in England forty years later.

During the early Victorian uprush of industrialism a man's chil-
dren had been breadwinners, and family limitation had naturally
lapsed. But when humanitarian legislation had begun to rescue chil-
dren from factories, the population specter had shown itself once
more.

In 1 86 1 was formed the Malthusian League, designed to influence
public opinion and overcome the prevailing misconception of Mal-
thusianism, and in 1876 a Bristol bookseller brought out an English
edition of Fruits of Philosophy. He was promptly arrested on the
charge of publishing an obscene book, and sentence was suspended
on his plea of guilty.

The brilliant rationalist and freethinker, Charles Bradlaugh, a re-
doubtable personality, together with Annie Besant, later the renowned
Theosophist but then a young rebel, started a printing partnership and
sold the pamphlet. Although not approving it in all its details they
determined to contest the right to publish it and to prove that pre-
vention of conception was not obscene.

Extraordinary interest was aroused in their trial before Lord
Chief Justice Cockburn and a special jury. The Solicitor General
himself appeared as chief counsel for the prosecution. Taking a copy
of Fruits of Philosophy in his hands he opened it solemnly and said,
"It is really extremely painful to me," then hesitating, "very painful
to me to have to read this." But he did so.

Bradlaugh and Besant conducted their own defense. The latter
with eloquence and astonishing poise held the admiring attention of
the court for two days. Nevertheless, both were convicted of defam-
ing the morals of the public, sentenced to six months in jail and a
thousand-dollar fine, and required to put up guarantees of twenty-
five hundred dollars for good behavior during the next two years.

128 MARGARET SANGER

The case was immediately appealed. Fortunately the upper court
dismissed it on a technicality, because, specific evidence of obscenity
was not included; if the words were polluting they had to appear in
the record. 4

This decision settled for all time in England that contraception
was not to be classed among the obscenities. As a result, new life
was injected into the Malthusian League and its name was changed
to the Neo-Malthusian Society. In the first issue of its monthly jour-
nal it set forth a modest claim : "We have the ONLY REMEDY that
the disease of society can be cured by." Instead of the impractical ad-
vice of Malthus to marry late, the Neo-Malthusians advised early
marriage, the use of contraceptive methods, and children born ac-
cording to the earning capacity of the father ; a man's station in life
should determine the number of his children. Furthermore, they in-
tended one by one to "prick the flimsy bubbles of emigration, lessened
production, and home colonization, which are from time to time put
forward." The emphasis was still placed on the social and economic
aspects rather than the personal tragedies of women.

That was in 1876; now in 1914 the Drysdales, Dr. C. V. and
his wife, Bessie, were the guiding spirits of the Society. They had a
long heritage of Malthusianism behind them ; the uncle of the former,
Dr. George Drysdale, fresh from Edinburgh in 1854, had anony-
mously published his Elements of Social Science, which had gone
into fifteen languages. He had even himself studied Chinese to en-
sure a reasonably accurate translation in that tongue. In the darkest
days of Victorianism, this young physician had included the New
Woman in his interpretation of Malthus. Both he and his brother
Charles, also a physician, had been in love with Alice Vickery, who
had chosen the latter and borne him a son, the present C.V.

Alice Vickery was as great in her day as Mary Wollstonecraft in
hers. After a tremendous struggle, which included getting her de-
gree in Dublin and her training in Paris, she had proved her right to
enter the medical profession, and had become the first woman doctor
in England.

My keenest desire was to get in touch with the Drysdales. They
invited me to tea at their offices — offices in the English sense, not
ours. I squelched through the inevitable rain to Queen Anne's Cham-

WE SPEAK THE SAME GOOD TONGUE 120,

bers and was astonished to find nothing on the door except Dr. C. V.
Drysdale's name. The term Malthusian was not considered proper
according to the landlord's ideas of propriety. In fact, throughout
England the word brought up antagonism. People crossed the street
to avoid it.

I entered a sitting room, gay with chintz-covered chairs and a. sofa,
pillows at the back, quite fitted to Queen Anne's own day. A fire was
burning cheerily, yet even this was not so welcome as the open arms
and excitement with which I was greeted, not only by the Drysdales
but also by Dr. Binnie Dunlop, dark, Scotch, thin, and dapper, in-
tellectually enthusiastic although not emotionally so ; by Olive John-
ston, the faithful secretary who had worked for many years with
the Drysdales ; and by F. W. Stella Browne, an ardent Feminist whose
faintly florid face, hair never quite white, and indefatigable vivacity
are the same a quarter of a century later. Many women in causes
are like that ; something in their spirit keeps them forever young.

Dr. Drysdale was then in his early forties, slender, fair, inclined
to be bald. In his ebullience he was not at all British, but his pleas-
ing, warm, and courteous personality was British at its best. Bessie
Drysdale, about her husband's age, was the practical member, dispens-
ing charming hospitality. The others were like an army meeting me,
but she brought up the rear with tea and cakes and comforting
things.

It seemed to me I had seen them and known them all before. I was
immediately certain I had come to the right place. In the United
States I had been alone, pulling against all whose broad, general
principles were the same as mine but who disapproved of my actions.
But these new friends saw eye to eye with me. Instead of heaping
criticism and fears upon me, they offered all the force of an inter-
national organization as well as their encyclopedic minds to back
me up.

The policy of the Neo-Malthusians had been to educate the edu-
cators. They believed that once the practice of family limitation had
been established among the well-to-do and socially prominent, it
would be taken up by the lower strata. They were not discouraged,
although after almost forty years success seemed as far away as
ever; the working classes not only evinced no desire for the benefits

I30 MARGARET SANGER

of family limitation, but did not even know such a thing existed.

Everybody in the room appreciated my rebellion and extended con-
gratulations on a name having been coined which was so simple and
easy to understand as birth control. When I told them how I had
managed the distribution of the Family Limitation pamphlets Dr.
Drysdale stood up impetuously and said, "Oh, would to God we had
a Comstock law ! There's nothing can so stir the British people as a
bad law. Then they will do something to change it !"

That afternoon was one of the most encouraging and delightful
of my life. The warmth of my reception strengthened me to face the
future. It lessened my dreadful homesickness and curbed the ever-
growing impulse to escape from war-sick London and hurry back to
the children. During my stay I saw much of the Drysdales and their
group, and between us all grew up a close kinship which has lasted
through the stormy years.

I like to think of London at this time chiefly because of all .my new
friends and the laughter they brought me. Of late there had been
little of it in my life, but with every friend I had in England — more
than with any other people I have ever known — I laughed, and this
laughter knit and welded the bonds of comradeship.

One day in the British Museum I was standing by the catalogs,
which were in the form of books, waiting until a man near me fin-
ished the volume I wanted to consult. I glanced at him idly, then
more closely, thinking I identified the profile from pictures I had
seen. When he had put the book down I ventured tentatively, "Aren't
you Edward Carpenter?"

Almost without looking at me he replied, "Yes, and aren't you
Margaret Sanger?"

It was a shock for Bertha Watson to hear this name repeated out
loud in a public place. However, Mr. Carpenter's recognition was
readily explainable. He had been more or less prepared to see me
because he had already received my letter and had that morning at
my rooming house been told I never returned from the British Mu-
seum until evening. Since we could not talk in this hall of silence,
we adjourned to the Egyptian Room, and then to lunch. He was hu-
man, full of wit, fun, and humor — a live person who exuded mag-
netism.

WE SPEAK THE SAME GOOD TONGUE I3I

Edward Carpenter reassured me that what I was doing was not
merely of the present but belonged even more to the future. From
this fine spirit I drew confirmation of the purity of my endeavor,
something essential for me to take back to America if others there
were to experience the same sense of justification. We beyond the
Atlantic were still uncertain of our ethics, and even of our morals.
We needed the sanction of British public opinion and the approval
of their great philosophers, so that we could be strong in our beliefs.

During the first weeks in England I did not feel vehemently about
the War, especially as signs were displayed everywhere, "Business
as usual." I supposed it would be a little flurry, soon over. War talk,
of course, was universal. The German espionage system was much
discussed. I wondered whether it were not the general characteristic
of the German always to observe and be accurate in detail which
made his information valuable. He did the same thing in the United
States, where nobody thought of calling him a spy. Everywhere
women were knitting socks and mitts, but I was more impressed by
the fact they were smoking in hotel lobbies — a new indication of
emancipation to me — and even rolling their own cigarettes. If a
woman came in for tea, without a word being said, a bell hop pro-
duced her own box of tobacco. When she left, it was returned to its
proper place.

As the months went on, however, to be an American became almost
as unlucky as to be a German. Whoever wished to remain safely in
England must agree with England, give over every vestige of in-
dependent thinking or free expression. Wherever I went I heard
mention of "Traitorous America." At one dining-car table a gray-
haired Englishman, unaware of my nationality, asserted, "Ameri-
cans will do anything for money."

"Yes," agreed his companion. "They do not care whom their
bullets kill. They get paid for them." He was a young Dutchman,
apparently just returned from the East Indies, and the conversation
between the two developed briskly. Americans were a "mixed breed
without souls ; they had none of the qualities which make a nation
great — no traditions, history, art, music, absolutely nothing but
their money; they had to come to Europe for everything — to Eng-
land for laws, customs, and morals, to France for fashions and arts ;

I32 MARGARET SANGER

they were human leeches fastened on Europe without incentive, orig-
inality, or creative ability ; they — "

I interrupted, "What do you want America to do? Why should
she get into this? Does she owe loyalty to England or France or
Russia?"

"Oh, no, but for Belgium. America signed the Hague Treaty with
the rest of us, and she has not stood by it."

To this I advanced the argument, "We Americans are not like
Europeans. We are a heterogeneous mixture of all the fighting forces
and nations of the world. We include the Irish who hate England,
and Jews who hardly can be said to love Russia. A large part of our
population — industrious, civil, reliable, and prosperous — are Ger-
mans, with whom our Scandinavians are sympathetic. Who then have
we to ally against Germany ? And why ? — a very small far-back men-
tion of gratitude to France for her help in our Revolution against
British rule — and the Statue of Liberty."

On the whole I came more nearly being a nationalist when I left
England than when I went there. I had to do such battle to explain
the United States that, almost involuntarily, I felt myself becoming
less of an internationalist. It was a strange feeling, as though some-
body you knew and loved were being criticized, and you took up the
cudgels in defense.

Chapter Eleven

HAVELOCK ELLIS

"He zvho ascends to mountain-tops shall find
Their loftiest peaks most wrapt in clouds and snow;
Round him, are icy rocks, and loudly blow
Contending tempests on his naked head."

LORD BYRON

i ,>\> >\\ fff. tff, ttf. i

AS Christmas approached, my loneliness for the children increased.
XJLThis was their particular time. I had messages from and about
them, but these could not give the small, intimate details ; the Atlantic
was a broad span, seeming more vast to letter writers. I missed their
voices, their caresses, even their little quarrels. I almost wondered
whether solitary confinement in prison were not preferable to my
present isolation.

In the midst of this stark yearning to be with them and share their
tree I received a cordial note from Havelock Ellis asking me to come
to tea. With kindly foresight he had given me explicit directions how
to reach Fourteen Dover Mansions in Brixton across the Thames. I
boarded a crowded bus at Oxford Circus. Though it was a miserable
day near the dark end of 1914, the spirit of Christmas was in the air
and everyone was laden with beribboned bundles and bright pack-
ages.

Looking askance at the police station which occupied the lower
floor I climbed up the stairs, and, with the shyness of an adolescent,
full of fears and uncertainties, lifted the huge brass knocker. The
figure of Ellis himself appeared in the door. He seemed a giant in
stature, a lovely, simple man in loose-fitting clothes, with powerful
head and wonderful smile. He was fifty-five then, but that head will
never change — the shock of white hair, the venerable beard, shaggy

133

134 MARGARET SANGER

though well-kept, the wide, expressive mouth and deep-set eyes, sad
even in spite of the humorous twinkle always latent.

I was conscious immediately that I was in the presence of a great
man, yet I was startled at first by his voice as he welcomed me in.
It was typically English, high and thin. I once talked to a prisoner
at Sing Sing who had been in the death house for three years and
could speak only in whispers thereafter. Ellis had been a hermit for
twenty-five. He had lived in the Bush in Australia, and later se-
cluded himself in his study. Nevertheless, the importance of what
he had to say much more than made up for the instrument which
conveyed it.

He led me to the living room through which the cheerless twilight
of a winter afternoon in London barely penetrated, and seated me
before a little gas fire. Some rooms impress you as ghastly cold even
when hot. This one, though lacking central heating, had the warmth
of many books. He lit two candles on the mantel, which flickered
softly over his features, giving him the aspect of a seer.

We sat down and quiet fell. I tried a few aimless remarks but I
stuttered with embarrassment. Ellis was still. Small talk was not
possible with him; you had to utter only the deepest truths within
you. No other human being could be so silent and remain so poised
and calm in silence.

While Ellis was preparing tea in the kitchen he left me to look over
his library and the most recent news from America. He had laid out
and marked certain pertinent items which he thought might not have
come to my attention. This, I later found, was one of his most en-
dearing characteristics. He always entered into the life of the other
person in little details, never forgetting even the kind of bread or
olives, fruits or wines, you preferred. His detachment was not in-
compatible with sympathy.

Soon appeared a large tray, laden with tea, cakes, and bread and
butter, and we sat down before the humming flame and talked and
talked ; and as we talked we wove into our lives an intangible web of
mutual interests. I began to realize then that the men who are truly
great are the easiest to meet and understand. After those first few
moments I was at peace, and content as I had never been before.
Entirely unaware of the reverence he aroused, Ellis pasted no labels

HAVELOCK ELLIS 1 35

on himself, had no poses, made no effort to impress. He was simply,
quite un-self consciously, what he was.

When he asked me to describe the details of how I had locked
horns with the law, I spoke glowingly of the heartening approval
which the Drysdales had just given me. He did not show the same
enthusiasm ; in fact he was rather concerned, and not so ready with
praise for my lack of respect for the established order, believing so
strongly in my case that he wanted me to avoid mistakes. I think his
influence was always more or less subduing and moderating; he
tried to get me, too, to take the middle road. Though he occasion-
ally alluded to some of the more amusing phases of the trial of his
own work, he had pushed it into the back of his mind.

This monumental study intended for doctors and psychologists
had been projected when Ellis was a medical student of nineteen. But
his short practice of medicine, his editing of the Mermaid Series of
Old British Dramatists, and the preparation of several sociological
treatises, had intervened before, in 1898, Sexual Inversion, the first
volume, had appeared. George Bedborough, printer, had been ar-
rested for selling a copy, and charged with "publishing an obscene
libel with the intention of corrupting the laws of Her Majesty's
subjects." Ellis, the scholar, preferred to ignore controversy; the
martyr's crown would not have coincided favorably with calm and
dispassionate research. Judging it merely stupid of the British Gov-
ernment to have pushed the case to trial, he suspended the sale of
the volume immediately, so disappointed that his own countrymen
did not understand his motives that he stated then and there he
would not have his other volumes published in England, and he
never has.

He, beyond any other person, has been able to clarify the ques-
tion of sex, and free it from the smudginess connected with it from
the beginning of Christianity, raise it from the dark cellar, set it on
a higher plane. That has been his great contribution. Like an alche-
mist, he transmuted the psychic disturbance which had followed my
reading of his books into a spiritual essence.

We had many things to discuss, but suddenly it dawned upon me
that I must have outstayed my time. Seven o'clock struck before I
realized how late it was. It had seemed so short to me.

136 MARGARET SANGER

I was not excited as I went back through the heavy fog to my
own dull little room. My emotion was too deep for that. I felt as
though I had been exalted into a hitherto undreamed-of world.

Some of my new friends, Guy Aldred, Henry Sara, and Rose
Witcop, invited me to tea with them Christmas Eve. Rose was de-
liberate in her movements, tall and dark, with straight black hair
falling low over her forehead and caught at the nape of the neck.
She and Guy were both ardent pacifists. A few days earlier I had
overheard them reproving their son, aged six, for suggesting that
Santa Claus bring him some lead soldiers. He had seen uniforms in
every street and toy replicas in every shop window; all little boys
were having them. I had not been able to send many presents to my
children, and before leaving the house slipped into his room. He was
sound asleep and his clothes were stretched out neatly at the foot of
his bed. Outraging my own principles I tucked a box of soldiers un-
der the blanket so that he might see this martial array the first thing
in the morning.

Rose and Guy were thoroughly disgusted with me.

Much that evening combined to stir me. Carol singers paraded
Torrington Square, group after group lifting plaintive voices in Good
King Wenceslas and We Three Kings of Orient Are. I was head-
achy but I went out and strolled about the streets to see Merrie Eng-
land at Yuletide. I had on so much clothing that I could scarcely
walk, and still I was icy cold. It was just about a year since I had left
France with the children, never to be reunited with Bill.

Since I am slow in my decisions and cannot separate myself from
past emotions quickly, all breaches must come gradually. A measure
of frustration is an inevitable accompaniment to endeavor. My mar-
riage had not been unhappy; I had not let it be. It had not failed
because of lack of love, romance, wealth, respect, or any of those
qualities which were supposed to cause marital rifts, but because the
interests of each had widened beyond those of the other. Develop-
ment had proceeded so fast that our lives had diverged, due to that
very growth which we had sought for each other. I could not live
with a human being conscious that my necessities were thwarting or
dwarfing his progress.

It had been a crowded year, encompassing the heights and depths

HAVELOCK ELLIS 137

of feeling. Christmas Eve was too much for me. I went back again
and sat, wondering whether the children were well and contented. The
next morning came a cable from them, flowers from Bill, and a nice
note from Havelock Ellis.

Thereafter Havelock aided me immensely in my studies by guid-
ing my reading. Tuesdays and Fridays were his days at the British
Museum, and he often left little messages at my seat, listing helpful
articles or offering suggestions as to books which might assist me in
the particular aspect I was then engaged upon.

If when traveling about with him on the tram, going to a concert,
shopping for coffee and cigarettes outside the Museum, a thought
came to him, he would pull out a bit of paper and jot down notes.
That was how he compiled his material for books, gathering it piece-
meal and storing it away in envelopes. Anything on the dance went
into the dance envelope, music into music, and so on. As soon as any
one became full enough to attract his attention, he took it out and
started to make something of it.

Sometimes we dined together at a Soho restaurant; occasionally
I had tea at his flat. In his combined kitchen and dining room,
warmed by a coal stove, he did his work, and there also he cooked
meals for which he marketed himself. He was proud of being able
to lay a fire with fewer sticks and less paper than an expert char-
woman, and once said he would rather win praise for the creation of
a salad than of an essay.

One of the four rooms was set aside for the use of his wife,
Edith. She preferred the country and lived on her farm in Cornwall,
whereas Havelock loved to be in the city; though he was not a part
of it, he liked to hear it going on about him. Whenever she came to
town she found all her books and possessions inviolate; whenever
he went to Cornwall he found everything ready for him. Either of
them could, on impulse, board a train without baggage and in a few
hours be at home.

Edith was short and stocky, high-colored, curly-haired, with mys-
tical blue eyes but accompanying them a strain of practicality. She
could run the farm, look after the livestock, and dispose of her
products. Her vitality was so great that it sought other outlets in
writing fiction.

I38 MARGARET SANGER

Bernard Shaw was once trying to find his way to the Ellis farm
and stopped at a cottage to inquire whether he was on the right road.
The goodwife could not tell him.

"But I know Mr. and Mrs. Ellis live near here."

She kept protesting nobody of that name was in the neighborhood
until Shaw pointed to a house which appeared as though it might be
the one. "Who lives there?"

"Two strangers."

"What do they do?"

"Oh, the man he writes out of other folks' books, but she writes
out of her head."

The person who saw most of Havelock was Olive Schreiner, a
long-standing friend of his and of Edith. I was delighted at the
chance of meeting the author of Woman and Labor and of another
favorite, The Story of an African Farm. She had just come to Eng-
land for the first time in twenty-five years and been caught in the
War.

Knowing Havelock to be a philosopher, I had expected him to be
an elderly man, but, despite his white hair, had found him young,
physically and mentally. Olive Schreiner's writings were so alive
that I had visualized a young woman. Instead, although her hair was
black, her square and stout Dutch body was old and spread. She had,
perhaps, been partly aged by the frightful asthma from which she
had suffered for so many years. The effect was enhanced by the dark
surroundings of the shabby hotel in which I first saw her.

Certainly another contributing factor was her despondence over
the War. Although her mother was English, her father Dutch, and
she a British subject, her Germanic name was causing her the most
harrowing complications. Fellow hotel guests of her own sex, when
they spied her name on the register or heard her paged, insisted to
the manager that either she should be removed or they were going
to seek quarters elsewhere. She was literally being hounded from
place to place.

Possibly Olive felt the tragedy of the War more than any other
person I met in London at this time. She had never believed that "the
boys would be out of the trenches by Christmas," or that business as

HAVELOCK ELLIS 1 39

usual could continue much longer. Already she had seen the horrors
of armed conflict in South Africa; it seemed to begin lightly, but
it did not end that way. She feared the whole world might be trapped
in this one, that internationalism and the peace movement were prac-
tically finished, and that a whole new generation had to be born before
we could recover what we had lost. She appeared to me then unduly
disheartened ; it was only later when her words came true that I com-
prehended how accurate were her prophecies.

Better than any living being Olive understood Havelock. I real-
ized this during a conversation between herself and Edith. The lat-
ter had been in the United States lecturing on three writers : her hus-
band, James Hinton, whom he admired tremendously, and Edward
Carpenter. Her reception had convinced her the name of Ellis had
gone beyond the borders of England, and she wanted him to return
with her the following year to reap some of the reward of the respect
thousands of Americans had for him.

Havelock was terror-stricken, first at the idea of coming to a new
country, and second at the mere mention of speaking in public. He
could imagine no tortures worse than these. But in order to please
Edith, whom he loved dearly, and also because her persistency and
determination were so great that he found it hard to oppose her, he
agreed to leave it to the three of us.

Edith and I had called on Olive to talk it over. She, as usual, had
just recently moved. This time she was more cheerful, and after tea
we took up the momentous question of the destiny of another indi-
vidual. Edith, with her customary fire and fervor, started in to per-
suade Olive, Havelock's lifelong friend, and me, his new friend,
that going to America would be a crowning glory for him. She en-
treated our aid in making him decide to do so.

Olive characteristically listened with rapt attention until Edith had
finished. Then she turned to me. "What do you think Havelock
should do?"

I, knowing how much Americans expected of a speaker in the
way of voice, personality, and gift of oratory, and also how easily
they could be disappointed unless gestures and external appearance
fulfilled their anticipations, concluded he would not find this crown

140 MARGARET SANGER

of glory or this universal acclaim, and that he would probably return
disillusioned after the first fanfare of publicity. I said, without giv-
ing my reasons, "I don't think he should go."

"Have either of you asked Havelock what he wants to do?" Olive
questioned.

"I have," said Edith, "and he doesn't want to."

"Then that settles the matter entirely," replied Olive. "Nobody
has the authority to make another do what he doesn't want to, no
matter how good you or I or any of us think it might be for him.
I myself will never take a step that my instinct or intuition tells me
not to. I am guided wholly by that instinct, and if I should awaken
tomorrow morning and my inner voice told me to go to the top of
the Himalayas, I would pack up and go."

This brief speech determined the question for Havelock, his right
to stay snugly in London, and to give up all the adventure Edith had
planned for him.

Olive, in her commonly dark mood, was encouraged more by the
work being done for women in birth control than by anything else.
She herself, who had had but one child, which had died, realized its
significance. The last time I saw her she put both arms around me
and said, "We may never meet again,- but your endeavor is the bright
star shining through the black clouds of war."

She was not able to go back to South Africa until the War was
over. One morning, not long afterwards, she was found dead in her
bed. According to her instructions, her little child and beloved dog
were removed from their old resting places and Kaffirs carried the
three of them to the peak of a mountain outside Queenstown, where
they have since reposed on their high eminence.

Ellis has been called the greatest living English gentleman. But
England alone cannot claim him ; he belongs to all mankind. I define
him as one who radiates truth, energy, and beauty. I see him in a
realm above and beyond the shouting and the tumult. Captains and
kings come and go. Lilliputian warriors strut their hour, and bound-
ary lines between nations are made and unmade. Although he takes no
active share in this external trafficking, he does not dwell apart in an
ivory tower of his own construction.

This Olympian seems to be aloof from the pain of the world, yet

HAVELOCK ELLIS 141

he has penetrated profoundly into the persistent problems of the
race. Nothing human is alien to his sympathy. His knowledge is
broad and deep; his wisdom even deeper. He makes no strident,
blatant effort to cry aloud his message, but gradually and in ever-
increasing numbers, men and women pause to listen to his serene
voice.

Here is a phenomenon more amazing than the achievements of
radio-activity. Despite all the obstacles and obstructions that have
hindered his expression, his truth has filtered through to minds ready
to receive it. His philosophy, if it can be reduced to an essence, is
that of life more abundant — attained through a more complete un-
derstanding of ourselves and an unruffled charity to all.

To Havelock Ellis we owe our concept of that Kingdom of God
within us, that inner world which hides all our inherent potentiali-
ties for joy as well as suffering. Thanks to him we realize that hap-
piness must be the fruit of an attitude towards life, that it is in no
way dependent upon the rewards or the gifts of fortune. Like St.
Francis of Assisi, he teaches the beauty of nature, of his brother the
sun and his sister the moon, of birds and fish and animals, and all
the pageantry of the passing seasons.

I have never felt about any .other person as I do about Havelock
Ellis. To know him has been a bounteous privilege; to claim him
friend my greatest honor.

Chapter Twelve

STORK OVER HOLLAND

VVX »« AV\ ,<,\V \V\ .VOL .xx* ,xv> .>v> .xvv .vsv .vvv .
*iJ9 W? 'iii 'Hi "iii 'id? 'id? '??? 'id? ??? *??? id? ,

DAY after day the attendants at the British Museum piled books
and pamphlets on the table before my seat. As I pored over
the vital statistics of Europe it seemed to me that chiefly in the
Netherlands was there a force operating towards constructive race
building. The Dutch had long since adopted a common-sense attitude
on the subject, looking upon having a baby as an economic luxury
— something like a piano or an automobile that had to be taken care
of afterwards.

The Drysdales often mentioned the great work done by, Dr. Aletta
Jacobs of Amsterdam and Dr. Johannes Rutgers of the Hague. The
story of Dr. Jacobs' conquest of nearly insuperable obstacles to a
medical career was particularly appealing. Born in 1854 in the Prov-
ince of Groningen, she was the eighth child of a physician who, on
eight hundred dollars a year, had to support his wife and eleven chil-
dren. Even before adolescence she had asked defiantly, "What's the
use of brains if you're born a girl?" She was determined to become
a doctor like her father, though no woman had ever been admitted
to Groningen University. Her spirit was so indomitable that when
at seventeen she had passed the examinations and demanded entrance,
she had been permitted to listen for a year, and then allowed to regis-
ter as a permanent student.

In 1878 Dr. Jacobs had finished her studies in medicine at Am-
sterdam University and gone to London, where she had attended the
Besant and Bradlaugh trial, met the Fabians, met the Malthusians,

142

STORK OVER HOLLAND 1 43

become an ardent suffragist. This first woman physician in the Neth-
erlands had returned to Amsterdam and there had braved the disap-
proval of her father's friends by practicing her profession and by
opening a free clinic for poor women and children, where she gave
contraceptive advice and information, the first time this had ever
been done in the world. .

/Within a few years and within a radius of five miles the proportion \
of stillbirths and abortions as well as venereal disease had started to J
decline, children were filling the schools, people were leaving their
canal boats to go into agriculture..

The Netherlands being such a small country, where one person's
business was everybody's business, such changes could not escape
notice. Just about this time Dr. Charles R. Drysdale, then President
of the English League, had been invited ,to address an International
Medical Congress held in Amsterdam. The results of Dr. Jacobs'
clinic were so apparent that immediately thereafter the Dutch Neo-
Malthusian League had been formed and thirty- four physicians had
joined it. "^Vhen other centers were established, purely for consulta-
tion, the word clinic was applied to them also/In 1883 Dr. Mensinga,
a gynecologist of Flensburg, Germany, had published a description
of a contraceptive device called a diaphragm pessary, which he and
Dr. Jacobs had perfected. yDr. and Madame Hoitsema Rutgers had
taken charge of the League in 1899 with such success that the work
had spread through that well-ordered kingdom. In recognition of its
extensive and valuable accomplishment, Queen Wilhelmina had pre-
sented it with a medal of honor and a charter, and counted it one of
the great public utilities.

• In my statistical investigations I paid special attention to the birth
and mortality rates of the Netherlands to see how they had been
affected over this period of thirty-five years. They showed the lowest
maternal mortality, whereas the United States was at the top of the
list; three times more mothers' lives were being saved in the little
dike country than in my native land. furthermore, the infant death
rate of Rotterdam, Amsterdam, and the Hague, the three cities in
which the League was most active, were the lowest of all those in
the world.

During the same period the death rate had been cut in half, but,

144 MARGARET SANGER

surprisingly, I found that the birth rate had been reduced only a
third. In other words, the death rate had fallen faster than the birth
rate, which meant that the population of the Netherlands was in-
creasing more rapidly than that of any other country in Europe.

I had much difficulty in reconciling these figures with my precon-
ceived idea that birth control would automatically bring about a de-
crease in population. Since it was increasing, then perhaps birth con-
trol was not, after all, the answer to the economic international prob-
lem. If this were true all my calculations were going to be upset.

Impatient to go to the Netherlands and dig out the real facts, not
only from Dutch records but from personal observation, I decided
quietly — most of my decisions in those days were quiet ones — to
cross the Channel. This implied possible unwelcome encounters with
inquisitive officials, floating bombs, submarines, and every type of
inconvenience and delay, but my eagerness made me discount the
hindrances.

I applied. to the Dutch Consul for a visa to Bertha Watson's pass-
port.

"Eighty cents, please," and no questions asked.

So that I should not have to return to London before going on to
Paris I presented myself at the French Consulate also. I waited two
hours. "Two dollars, please," and still no queries.

I attached myself to the end of the long line waiting at Victoria
Station to have passports inspected, and was soon safely on. the train
for Folkestone. We were late when we reached the Channel. Again
we lined up for inspection. Many Belgian women with four or five
children were going back to their people; the sleepy little ones and
the tired women settled on the platform to rest until some had
gone through. Two detectives glanced casually at my passport, and
then allowed me to enter the official chamber. Inspections had been
growing steadily more strict ; this was the ultimate test. There sat in
a row three officers in mufti, well-fed and brusque with authority.
I handed my passport to the first, who looked me up and down as
though I were a treacherous enemy, then pushed it over to the next.
This man too viewed me with suspicion and mistrust, and pulled out
a notebook, scanning the names to see whether mine were on the
proscribed list. The last of the three, who was to make the final de-

STORK OVER HOLLAND 145

cision — crisp, trim, and hard as nails in voice and manner — de-
manded, "What are you going to the Continent for, Madam? An-
other joy ride? You Americans must think that's all this War
amounts to. Can you produce any good reason for letting you
through?"

Fortunately I was prepared for such a contingency. I took out of
my purse a letter from Bernarr MacFadden asking me to answer cer-
tain questions in the form of articles for Physical Culture such as the
relation between the unfit and population growth. I offered this docu-
ment while those in line behind me waited restively. He read it me-
ticulously, taking longer than necessary as it seemed to me in my
nervousness. At last he folded it neatly and said, "A good work, this.
Too bad someone hasn't done it before."

Then he put* his last official stamp on my various papers and I
passed through for the gangplank.

No complications presented themselves at the Hague, and early
on a January morning in 191 5 I registered at an inexpensive hotel.
It was comforting, to hear a radiator sizzling once more. I joined
the other guests who were cheerfully breakfasting together en famille
at a single table, and, since I spoke neither Dutch nor German, silently
munched my black bread and cheese, downed the excellent coffee, and
watched interestedly. Though stolid in appearance like all the Dutch,
they were friendly.

I did not try to telephone Dr. Rutgers. Instead, though it was not
yet nine o'clock, I hailed a taxi and held out to the driver a slip of
paper on which I had written the street and number. In response to
my ring at the door to which I was delivered, a tiny square window
in the upper part opened mysteriously and a face — wizened, aged,
and inquisitive — was framed in the aperture. It remained while I ex-
plained my mission. Apparently trust was inspired because, my story
finished, the door swung wide and the face, materialized into Dr.
Rutgers, ushered me into the library, where I waited until he came
back in his street clothing. Then we went out to a second breakfast
in a nearby cafe.

The doctor turned out to be a kindly little man, whose wife was
now an invalid. It was hard for him to talk English. Most of the
Dutch had four languages, but only those who had lived in England

I46 MARGARET SANGER

spoke English well. The difficulties, however, lessened as we nibbled
brioches and sipped coffee after coffee until noon. Warming to my
narrative of the battle in the United States, he shook his head when
he thought of what I might have to face in the future, and expressed
more concern over my predicament and more heartfelt sympathy
with my having had to leave the children behind than anybody I had
yet met. He was the first person to whom I had been able to over-
flow about my personal sadness.

On his part Dr. Rutgers described his hardships in keeping the
clinics open and, through the League, preventing adverse legisla-
tion. Neo-Malthusianism had never been popular anywhere, no mat-
ter what the proof in the lessening of human misery and suffering.
Dr. Rutgers had borne alone the brunt of all the criticism directed
at his society.

[ The Rutgers method for establishing new clinics had resulted in
a sound system for dealing with the birth rate. The men and women
who acted as his councilors understood that a rising birth rate, no
matter where in the country, would soon be followed by a high in-
fant mortality rate. Accordingly, they reported this quickly to the
society, which sent a midwife or practical nurse, trained in the tech-
nique standardized by Dr. Rutgers, into the congested sector to set
up a demonstration clinic. She usually took an apartment with two
extra rooms, one for waiting, the other a modestly equipped office
like that of any country midwife.

Her duty was to go into the home where a child had died, inquire
into the cause, and give friendly advice regarding the mother's own
health. She also encouraged her not to have another baby until the
condition of ignorance, poverty, or disease, whichever it might be,
had either been bettered or eliminated. Whenever four had been born
into such a family this advice was made more emphatic.

As soon as Dr. Rutgers had explained his policy to me I had that
most important answer to the puzzling and bothersome problem of
the increasing population in the Netherlands brought about by birth
control. It was proper spacing. The numbers in a family or the num-
bers in a nation might be increased just as long as the arrival of chil-
dren was not too rapid to permit those already born to be assured of
livelihood and to become assimilated in the community.

STORK OVER HOLLAND 1 47

Dr. Rutgers suggested I come to his clinic the next day and learn
his technique. He was at the moment training two midwives prepar-
atory to starting a new center in the outskirts of the Hague. Under
his tutelage I began to realize the necessity for individual instruc-
tion to patients if the method of contraception prescribed was to ful-
fill its function. I wondered at the ease with which this could be
done. Very soon even I myself, unable to talk to these women in
their own tongue, instructed seventy-five.

I used to bombard the little man with questions concerning each
case. I took issue with him over his autocratic system of dictating
without explanation. Merely saying, "This is what you do. Do this
always," had to my mind no educational value.

"Don't you think it would be a good idea to tell your patients what
you're aiming at and why?" I asked.

"No, can't take time. They must do what they're told."

His was the doctor's point of view with which I was familiar, but
with which I could not agree.

It also seemed to me a mistake to regard the women merely as
units in a sociological scheme for bettering the human race. On the
file cards were inscribed only names and addresses ; no case histories.
I wanted to know so much more about them. How many children had
they already had? How many had they lost? What were their hus-
bands' wages ? What was the spacing in each family, and what were
the effects? How successful had been the method of contraception?

If this information had then been recorded, the birth control move-
ment could later have cited chapter and verse in its own support.

After my morning's work with Dr. Rutgers I usually repaired to
the Central Bureau of Statistics') with my three-in-one translator, in-
terpreter, and guide. My findings were that in all cities and districts
where clinics had been established the figures showed improvement —
labor conditions were better and children were going to schools,
which had raised their educational standards! Professional prostitutes
were few, and even these were German, French, Belgian, or English,
because Dutch women were encouraged to marry early. It made a dif-
ference. From the eugenic standpoint there had been a rapid increase
in the stature of the Dutch conscript as shown by army records. The
data proved conclusively that a controlled birth rate was as beneficial

I48 MARGARET SANGER

as I had imagined it might be, growing out of the first clinic initiated
by the enterprise of Dr. Aletta Jacobs.

I was, of course, looking forward to meeting Dr. Jacobs, and sent
her a note asking for the privilege of an interview. A reply came,
curt and blunt; she would not see me. She was not concerned with
my studies or with me, because it was a doctor's subject and one in
which laymen should not interfere. Already I had come to the same
conclusion in principle, but was dismayed at this first rebuff I had
encountered. I was also hurt as much as I could be hurt during that
period when I seemed to be one mass of aches, physically and men-
tally. Not until much later did I learn that to be a nurse was no
recommendation in Europe, where she was more like an upper serv-
ant, a household drudge who took care of the sick instead of the
kitchen.

For two months I wandered about the Netherlands, visiting clinics
and independent nurses in the Hague, Rotterdam, and Amsterdam.
In spite of the League propaganda against commercialization I found
many shops in which a woman, if she so desired, could purchase con-
traceptive supplies as casually as you might buy a toothbrush. Un-
fortunately in some of them she could be examined and fitted by
saleswomen who had but little training in technique and scant knowl-
edge of anatomy. 'Although the Dutch League had several thousand
members — each one active, writing to papers, talking to friends, at-
tending meetings — and although fifty-four clinics were in opera-
tion, many well-informed people did not know anything about them.
More surprising still, the medical profession as a whole appeared to
be utterly ignorant of the directed birth control work that was going
on. \It did not, therefore, seem extraordinary that no inkling of all
this — either clinics or contraceptive methods — had ever reached
the United States, and practically no attempt to copy it been made
in England.

Even in this neutral country signs of war were everywhere. Along
the way were soldiers in uniform, armed and keeping guard, and at
the stations Red Cross wagons were in readiness. Feeling among the
Dutch was greatly mixed : Queen Wilhelmina's husband was a Ger-
man ; the army and the aristocracy were for the Triple Alliance ; the
poorer classes were more influenced by the sufferings of the thou-

STORK OVER HOLLAND 1 49

sands and thousands of Belgians who had flocked to Dutch firesides
for food and shelter.

Nowhere else was I so impressed with the tragedies of war. Often
about four o'clock I had kaffee Hatch at the home of some Dutch
lady who sat, very proper, while the maid served coffee, the best in
Europe, from the big, white, porcelain pot. I suspected most of the
morning had been spent in supervising preparations for the de-
licious food.

At one of these afternoons I was introduced to five German dele-
gates who had come to attend the Women's Peace Conference. They
found it difficult to forgive the stories of German atrocities which
England had allowed to circulate. I ventured to inquire how they
could disprove them, especially in view of the report of the Bryce
Commission. "Was not war cruel and savage, and might not these
things have happened ?"

"Yes, yes," one said, "but hundreds of our German boys are brought
back to us, dead and alive, whose noses and ears have been cut off,
put in packages, and taken to headquarters for reward. However,
we would not dream of accusing the French or the English soldiers
of such barbarisms. We know that because their code forbids them
to do these things themselves they have called in the Moors and the
Gurkhas and the savages from Africa."

Unable to comprehend how those towards whom they felt such
friendliness could return this sentiment with hatred, the women said
to me in bewilderment, "Tell us really why people who do not know
us hate us as they do." The dignity of their sorrow, the heavy bur-
den of grief under which they labored, the very calmness and fair-
ness with which they bore it, had a quieting effect.

The Netherlands was the place to regain a certain sense of bal-
ance, especially if you had passed through England, where feeling
was so embittered. I overheard in Amsterdam a most illuminating
conversation between two Englishmen and a German. After going
over the pros and cons, they shook hands all around, agreeing that
six months after the War was settled German and English trade
would be hand in glove, trials and grievances forgotten.

To go directly to France from the Netherlands was next to im-
possible ; nor did I find it easy to travel roundabout by way of Eng-

I50 MARGARET SANGER

land, owing to the recently instituted German submarine blockade.
Then at last I heard that a freighter was to be sent to London to test
it. Day after day I went to the docks for news, and employed the in-
terval with pleasant social contacts.

Rather than have a cocktail before lunch or dinner the Dutch as-
sembled at their favorite restaurants for aperitifs. The glass, with
winged rim spreading out about half an inch from the top, was filled
to overflowing with Bols. You were not supposed to touch it at first ;
instead you leaned over and sort of scooped a little with your mouth
before picking it up and enjoying it. The French aperitifs were pleas-
ant and mild, but Holland gin was so strong and raw that I marveled
at the way they could take it with a smile. I was definitely unequal
to the art.

One evening I was invited to play billiards with a Dutchman, an
Englishman, and a German. I accepted as naturally as for a game of
whist. Afterwards the Dutchman said that, though no respectable
Dutch wife could have played billiards in that room without later
being approached or insulted, an American woman could do any-
thing and still not lose caste. She minded her own affairs, paid her
own bills, and even if she were seen on the streets late at night with-
out an escort everyone knew she must be on legitimate business.

Then the Englishman spoke to the same effect. He said you found
the American woman in all sorts of out-of-the-way and often ques-
tionable places, but you needed only to look into her candid face to
find an answer to what she was doing there. European women owed
her a great deal for her pioneering on the Continent. In England it
was a common sight to see the most estimable women smoking ciga-
rettes in all fashionable restaurants and hotels just as in America. "

"Just as in America !" I gasped, remembering my astonishment at
having seen women smoke publicly in London. "I'm sure there must be
some mistake. Ladies are not supposed to smoke in America. As an
example to Europe they're a failure, because they haven't even won
that liberty for themselves."

This was a surprise to them all. But the Dutchman rallied to the
defense, shifting the subject. "Nevertheless, she is the best-dressed
woman in the world."

STORK OVER HOLLAND 151

"What about the Parisian?" I exclaimed.

"I except none. I have been over half the globe. I have paid par-
ticular attention to foreigners, their customs, their education, their
tastes, and I have been convinced that today the Parisian woman has
had to yield to the American in respect to clothes and fashion. Paris
designs are intended for the United States, not for France or Eng-
land. The Frenchwoman may be trim and neat and jaunty, but it
takes a woman of wealth in France to be in the fashion, while in New
York, every shopgirl wears cheap editions of the latest styles."

The German was deep in thought during these speeches, resting his
chin in his hand. Aroused by the striking of the clock he suddenly
interpolated, "Why, you can always tell an American couple in Eu-
rope. The woman is too bossy, she leads the way, she does all the
talking and ordering, while the man trails on behind her and silently
pays the bills."

"Well, you must have seen him when he was on his good be-
havior," I suggested, "for at home he is not so silent about paying
the bills."

Unabashed, the German continued, "My brother who has long
lived in America says the woman there is the head of the house, that
she manages all; her word is law. Is this true ?"

He seemed greatly disturbed, and I was about to reply, but the
Briton rose to speak. "Of course she is, because she's far superior.
Why, American men have nothing in common with the women. They
are coarse, blunt, crude, while the women are finely sensitive, ex-
quisite, and courteous. The man has nothing to give his wife but
money; he comes home at night and talks business, introduces into
his home only friends who will help him out financially, and when
his wife discusses music, art, or literature, he falls asleep and snores.
That's why she brings her fortune into Europe for a husband. She
finds her equal in the Frenchman, the Italian, the Spaniard, but par-
ticularly in the Englishman. For every Englishman is a gentleman,
and every American woman is a lady !"

The German added a final convulsive note to the settlement of the
woman problem by adding, "Is it true the American husband not
only washes the dishes but pushes the perambulator ?"

I52 MARGARET SANGER

"Why, yes, he often does that."

"That is terr-r-r-rrible," he answered, the r's rolling out, and his
hands clasped tight to his temples.

And at that we all departed for our rest. But a few days later one
or another of the quartet was demonstrated right. News came that
my boat was about to leave at once, and I sought out the Captain.
At the first intimation of my errand, he waved his hands and said,
"No! No! No women!"

I kept on talking until I made him admit he was interested in
America, in diet, and in population. When I found he was a reader
of Physical Culture I produced my open sesame letter and again it
was more potent than a passport. I stood reasoning with him on
the pier, until finally he said, "There's a rule to take no women. But
you Americans are not like others. I think I can put you in." I was
allowed to embark.

During the voyage we were most careful, anchoring at dusk, and
when it was light keeping sharp watch for floating mines which
might have broken loose from their moorings. It took us two nights
and a day to make a crossing that ordinarily occupied only nine or
ten hours.

I had plenty of time to sort out my impressions and conclusions
regarding the birth control movement. They had been revolutionized.
I could no longer look upon it as a struggle for free speech, because
I now realized that it involved much more than talks, books, or
pamphlets. These were not enough.

Personal instruction had been proved to be the best method, and I
concluded clinics were the proper places from which to disseminate
information but also, admirable as they were in the Netherlands,
they ought not to be placed in the hands of unskilled midwives, so-
cial workers, or even nurses. These could, of course, instruct after
a fashion, but only doctors had the requisite knowledge of anatomy
and physiology and training in gynecology to examine properly and
describe accurately:.

I had a new goal, but how difficult and how distant its attainment
was to be I never dreamed. *l

Chapter Thirteen

THE PEASANTS ARE KINGS

I STAYED but a few days in London and then went on to Paris,
a gloomy, gloomy city because so many people were garbed in
black. Jaures had been shot. The capital had already been moved to
Bordeaux and suspicion and hysteria were in the air. When I went
within easy driving distance of Paris for lunch or dinner, I could
see the barbed-wire entanglements and gaps where the trees had been
taken down for better visibility.

I renewed what contacts I could. But everybody was too busy now
with the War to think of such a subject as family limitation, which
to the French had never been anything to get excited about because
they were too used to it. Furthermore, the other side of the question
was now presenting itself. They were beginning to ask, "If we had a
larger population, could we not have held the Germans back ?"

Again I saw Victor Dave. He was literally starving to death, sup-
ported only by friendly gifts of a few francs here or there which
he always accepted with laughter ; what difference did it make to him
whether he lived a few days longer? I never saw greater gallantry
than was manifested by his smile and the shrug of his shoulders as
he sauntered to work with two pieces of dry bread in his pocket.

The libraries were shut. Paris was no place for me, but I could see
something of Spain, and Portet was waiting for me there. After the
customary passport argument and some surprise at the cost of the
sleeping-car arrangements I left for the South. It was four o'clock in

i53

154 MARGARET SANGER

the morning as the express pulled into Cerbere, the station on the
border, where the French viewed all passengers with caution and
mistrust.

"Cerbere!" shouted the guard, and, "Passports!" shouted an in-
spector following on his heels. Mine was not quite right. The
train moved out leaving me and my baggage desolate on the plat-
form. In the course of several interviews with various officials I made
out that my passport lacked a particular signature, and Perpignan
was the nearest town where it could be secured.

I paced up and down the tiny station watching for the train back.
As usual, peasants were asleep in the waiting room, some on the
floor, others sitting on bags and parcels. We were so close under the
shadow of the Pyrenees that they almost seemed to be toppling
over us.

From the train window I looked out on the beauty of dawn and
the rising sun, a scene of such magnificence that it repaid me in
pleasure for all the trouble. To one side was the far stretch of the
Mediterranean, as magic a blue as I had ever imagined it. To the
other were the majestic, rugged mountains with snow-capped peaks
and bases covered with pink, flowering apricots. Little villages of
white houses and red-tile roofs nestled in the valleys and serpentine
roads coiled up the hillsides, where thousands of acres of grape vines,
trim and well cared- for, bespoke the wine country.

From Perpignan I telegraphed Portet, "Live or die, sink or swim,
survive or perish, I'll be in Barcelona tomorrow," and boarded the
train once more with a light heart and my papers, three of them.

Already in the minute second-class compartment were a large,
middle-aged woman whose sweet face was framed in a black man-
tilla, a small gray-haired man, evidently her husband, and a younger
one of about twenty-five. It would have been crowded enough as it
was, but they had brought with them packages and bundles that filled
the space to the roof. However, they squeezed out enough room for
me to curl myself up and go to sleep.

I awakened with a start, hearing again the fateful word, "Pass-
ports!" and found the agent examining those of my fellow passen-
gers. I opened the bag where I had always carried my credentials,
but they were not there. The officer stood waiting. "I have my pa-

THE PEASANTS ARE KINGS 1 55

pers all signed," I said, "but I cannot find them. Go on to the others
and when you come back I'll have them."

Since he could not understand English my speech had little effect ;
he continued to wait. I began turning things out — letters, books,
pamphlets of all kinds and descriptions, groping through every bag,
in and out of every package. My traveling companions gazed on the
commotion sympathetically and drew their legs aside so I could look
under the seat.

At this point another uniform approached and the two consulted
together. Then one of them blew a whistle and at its loud and shrill
summons five men came running. The biggest of them threw wide the
compartment door, to indicate I must get off. They were jabbering
at me in French and Spanish ; I was talking English. All of us were
going as fast as we could. First I jumped up and expostulated, then
sat down and waved my hands saying, "Go away."

Finally there appeared a young Spanish student who could speak
English. He conveyed to me that the train was already late on my
account; I must get off so the other passengers could catch the
Barcelona Express.

I would not be bothered any more. "So do I want to catch it," I
exclaimed. "Why don't they move on? I have a passport and I'll find
it in a few minutes. I've paid for my ticket to Port Bou and I'm not
going back. You can stop the train here for a week if you want to —
I shan't budge !"

The gendarmes were standing expectantly on the platform below.
The interpreter shrugged his shoulders, "She'll do as she says. She's
an American woman and she'll never come down. You might as well
move on."

Nevertheless, the big fellow with the long black cape resolutely
seized one bag after another and handed them out. Underneath the
last one were disclosed the missing papers. Straightway everybody
was wreathed in smiles. The bags were restored and the agents
apologized, thanked me profusely, and departed.

The passengers shooks hands with me all around.

Just before we reached Port Bou one of them peered out the win-
dow, rippled off some words to the others in Catalan. The whole
compartment was as though electrified. In a few seconds parcels were

I56 MARGARET SANGER

being torn apart and boxes ripped open. The Senora removed her
mantilla and placed a smart new hat on her head, then crowned that
with another, and another, and another, until finally she was wearing
four. Yards of beautiful and exquisite lace went inside her bodice.
She took off her outer skirt and swathed her hips in lengths of cloth.
The men stuffed their pockets and the lining of their coats. At last
there were only a few rolls of braid left. The younger one lifted his
trousers, wound them round and round his legs and tucked the
ends in his garters. Then through the window went crumpled pa-
per, boxes, string. Finally, as the train was slowing up they put on
light-buff, linen dusters. My eyes popped out of my head to see these
simple people suddenly transformed into stylish stouts returning
from Paris.

The two men nonchalantly smoked cigars as though nothing out
of the way were going on while the customs officials went through
their bags. Everybody concerned knew they were merchants smug-
gling goods, but even the authorities regarded it as legitimate for
them to bring in as much as they could carry on their persons. As
they left the shed where my belongings were still being scrambled
over, they glanced commiseratingly at me and glowered indignation
at the officials that a lady should be so served.

I had expected to find in Barcelona street-corner Carmens with
hibiscus blossoms in their hair, wandering guitarists and singers. But
the only music that passed my window oozed out mechanically from
two-wheeled, highly-ornamented hurdy-gurdies. Nevertheless, the
city was full of color. Strange little wagons with canvas covers,
looking as though they were part of a caravan, rattled over the cob-
bles. There was something gorgeously elegant about the members
of the Guardia Civil, grandly mounted on Arabian horses, their
mustachios fiercely bristling, their uniforms ablaze with scarlet and
yellow topped off with black patent leather hats. The red Phrygian
caps of the porters seemed almost too realistic a reminder of revolu-
tion. The workers still wore their crimson-fringed sashes, their blue
French blouses, and white rope-soled shoes. The men, as a rule, were
of slight frame, but conveyed an impression of strength like steel
rods; the women, invariably black-clad except for the very young,
were fat and waddling.

THE PEASANTS ARE KINGS 1 57

Numberless bells were constantly ringing in numberless churches.
Everywhere, like crows, were priests in long swinging robes, shovel
hats, and dirty bare toes sticking through their sandals. On the cor-
ners of the central streets I saw them occupying the booths of the
professional correspondents who for ten cents read and answered
letters for the illiterate.

Although Barcelona, capital of the separatist province of Cata-
lonia, was the progressive, industrial center of Spain, it was not
darkened by a melee of belching chimneys. The hundreds of fac-
tories were kept out of sight, each one isolated in the fields, leaving
the city free from traffic, smoke, and the whir of machinery. The
palms in the squares and parks were lovely, but set side by side with
the new was the startling antiquity of the old town, congested and
melancholy.

Overlooking the sea at the end of the Rambla, decorated along
its length with flower stalls and trees, loud with birds, stood a tall
column bearing the statue of Columbus. Around the base were scenes
portraying various incidents of the voyage to America, each repre-
sented by small images cast in bronze, all beautiful to the last detail.
But the effect was greatly spoiled because nearly every one remaining
had a leg, arm, foot, or even head gone. After looking at this for
some time and pondering over the wherefore, I concluded that figures
so strongly made and set had not easily been removed, and decided
it must have something to do with the Spanish-American War.
When I asked my Spanish friends whether I had guessed correctly,
their only explanation was that ruffians had doubtless done it for
sport.

However, after I had left the country I received verification of my
supposition. The monument had been stoned in '98, but no Spaniard
would ever have admitted this fact to any American; it might hurt
the feelings of the visitor even to mention the unpleasantness.

I began to study Spanish with a teacher, but I was not nearly far
enough advanced to be able to get anywhere in my investigations.
Unfortunately also, although men thronged the cafes in droves, they
kept their wives in semi-Oriental seclusion and even mentally im-
posed their deep-rooted ideas of the isolation of women on foreign-
ers. I could not violate this custom by going about alone, because I

I58 MARGARET SANGER

was a guest. As a result Portet, who was a busy man himself, pro-
vided me with a succession of male escorts.

Towards the end of a certain afternoon, tired and footsore, I was
sitting with one of these accommodating gentlemen at a sidewalk
table sipping an aperitif — a delicious French vermouth supplemented
by olives stuffed with anchovies. Bootblacks were making their cus-
tomary rounds of the patrons, and the men were having their shoes
cleaned. Since I had been walking about a great deal, mine were ap-
pearing rather scuffed, and I stretched my feet out.

My companion looked at me appealingly. "I beg of you, Senora,
not here."

"Why not?"

But the boy had already brought his little shoe rest, begun spit-
ting on my oxford and rubbing with energy and enthusiasm. Em-
barrassed, my escort rose and moved away, but, interested in the boy's
novel methods, I kept my eyes on my shoes and was unaware of any-
thing out of the ordinary.

As soon as he had finished I glanced up. There must have been
twenty-five men gathered in front of the cafe, all looking fixedly and
intently at this unusual spectacle. When I opened my purse to pay
the boy, he doffed his cap with the most gracious gesture. "Senora,
this is my pleasure."

The crowd outside applauded loudly and I felt my face growing
hot. Not until they had drifted off did my protector return, wan and
pale and extremely agitated. "You see what you've done, you see ? It
will be the joke of Spain! You are the friend of Professor Portet!
It is a reflection on him and on his family! You cannot do these
things !"

I realized then that I had to be more circumspect.

Portet, who after all was Ferrer's successor, was watched wher-
ever he went by the secret service, and soon pointed out that I too
had a shadow — the man who sat constantly at the little, round,
marble-topped table across from my hotel. He said I should always
have this individual or one of his mates with me. They were on eight-
hour duty, and if I were to go in for any night life I would have three
separate ones over the twenty-four hours.

These government agents were to give a regular report of whom

THE PEASANTS ARE KINGS 1 59

I was with and where I went, and, in a sense, they also looked after me,
although Portet was never without a revolver in his pocket. In Spain
a breath of dampness, and pop — open went the umbrellas all over the
place. Once on the way to a benefit for the Belgians Portet and I
were waiting for the tram when a spatter of rain came up. His spy
rushed to hold an umbrella over him while mine ran after my hat
which the wind had saucily blown off my head. Or, if I were taking
a train alone, my daytime attendant, having already been in con-
ference with the hotel proprietor, would appear at the ticket office
and explain to the clerk where I wanted to go. Had he spoken Eng-
lish I would have doubtless enjoyed his conversation, but Portet
warned me it was beneath my dignity even to nod good morning to
such a creature.

The frequent friendly attentions of our spies could not draw a
word of approval from Portet, though on one occasion they performed
a real service. Stopping en route at the American Express Company to
get some money, we set out to see a part of the old city new to me.
Only a few blocks from the banks and modern shops were center
pumps from which women were carrying the water to their homes
in tall earthen jugs, in just the same primitive manner as centuries
ago. The houses in the red-light district were approached by outside
stairways along which were niches enclosing receptacles for holy
water, and into these the patrons dipped their fingers religiously,
crossed themselves, and entered.

While we were walking through one of the narrow streets, high-
walled on either side, suddenly and without reason I felt alarmed,
and at the same moment Portet put his hand in his pocket. I glanced
behind to find our two familiar guarding shadows gone; I sensed
danger ahead, but I, too, tried to act as though everything were all
right, as though there were nothing to worry about. We strolled in
the same leisurely way to the corner. There in a flash down another
street we caught a quick glimpse of struggling figures in the distance.
In a moment they disappeared.

We proceeded to our destination — a little cafe fronting the Medi-
terranean. As we sat admiring it, I was startled by the sight of our
two spies approaching, one of them holding a long, jagged-edged
knife. I could not understand his excited words, but his pantomime

l60 MARGARET SANGER

was so graphically descriptive of a life-and-death struggle that my
flesh began to creep and shivers ran up and down my backbone. He
paused, bowed, and held out the knife, obviously offering it to me.

Portet, looking very incensed, pulled out his revolver, showed it
to the man, and ordered him off. When both had retired, abashed,
Portet translated briefly, "He says he has saved your life — that rob-
bers saw you get money at the American Express this morning, and
that he knew they were going to attack you. He followed and grabbed
the knife away from them. I told him this was unnecessary. The
thieves would have got as good as they gave ! I can take care of you."

I thought I ought at least to have given the man a reward, but not
Portet, the revolutionary, who was furious at the presumption. He
was always angry at them. When he came to lunch with me Palm
Sunday, the hotel proprietor leaned over the table confidentially and
said, "The government agent wishes to speak to you."

Portet shouted, "If he comes near, I'll shoot him! The hound, the
worm, the dog ! How dare he ?"

"Can't we find out what he wants?" I suggested.

The proprietor returned, "Nothing, Sefior, except to ask whether
you and the Senora are attending the bullfight this afternoon. His
time is up at four o'clock, but if you are going to the plaza de toros,
he will be glad to stay on duty another eight hours."

We went; he came right along and saw the spectacle at govern-
ment expense.

The cement-like benches of the large amphitheater were crowded
to full capacity. The people were gesticulating, chattering volubly as
though awaiting something unusual or something good eagerly antici-
pated. Overhead the monotonous, gray sky seemed like a huge tent,
it was so regular and colorless, but every little while a patch of blue
appeared. The disposition of the onlookers changed with the same un-
expectedness from gladness and joy almost instantaneously into im-
patience or wrath ; at one moment they clapped and praised the mata-
dor, at the next they insulted and vilified him.

Most of my Spanish friends hoped I would like a bullfight, al-
though Portet, who thought it barbaric, told me it would probably
shock me ; every foreigner who saw one simply shut his eyes in hor-
ror when some poor old skeleton horse was so gored that its intes-

THE PEASANTS ARE KINGS l6l

tines fell out and then were pushed back for its re-entry into the
arena. If I were going to be conspicuous by showing my feelings,
the populace might turn upon me, and, jokingly, he suggested fol-
lowing the example of Alfonso XIII, who had given his English
bride a pair of opera glasses with perfectly black lenses because she
was so open and frank at displaying her emotions. She had stood
and stared blankly at them all the time, and thus got through her
first bullfight.

I promised to be careful, and watched with the naked eye.

The bull came out snorting with passion and vigor, glaring around
the arena with a great noble sweep of his head. Suddenly he saw a
color he did not like, something inimical. He lunged towards it, and
then a medieval-looking figure danced before him with a cape to
confuse him. He forgot his original enemy and rushed at the red
thing. Another gyrating figure distracted his attention and angered
him to wheel towards the new adversary, make another plunge, and
again be met by a flash of color.

Over and over and over again this happened. The poor bull's vi-
tality was finally worn down, not from direct combat, but because of
the many bewildering forces that were there to destroy him — the
fluttering capes, the kaleidoscopic shapes, the swift-thrown banderil-
las, and the gleaming lances of the picadors. Then, when he was
bleeding and utterly spent, the hero stepped out with a sword to kill
him. He was dragged out, sombreros whirled into the arena, shrieks
and shouts arose, the band played, a great victory had been achieved.

Within no time, even before another bull appeared, vendors came
along with baskets of hot sandwiches made from the barbecued meat
of the one just killed.

Not a single word would Portet let me say until we were entirely
out of hearing; you could talk freely in Spain against the Church or
the priests, but this sacred institution must not be criticized. Passing
through my mind was the thought that a bullfight was symbolic of
the struggle of the working classes. Strikes, picketing, jails ex-
hausted their energy until they too charged blindly this way and that,
always missing the main issue.

Many of my holidays were spent more happily than this. I never
tired of the wooded mountains which sheltered Barcelona, most of

1 62 MARGARET SANGER

them having some religious significance. Portet and I went up the
funicular to the top of Tibidabo, the exceeding high place where the
devil tempted Jesus, showing him in a moment of time the world
spread out before him.

Another glorious spring day we twisted up the thirty miles of
road to Montserrat, the mountain riven in two at the Crucifixion. It
was the quaintest sight to one coming from a land of subways and
elevators to watch the donkeys laden with packs on their backs of
vegetables, eggs, and butter, and to see their owners straggling be-
side up and down the hills, masters of at least themselves if not of
their donkeys. The breeze blew more chill as we ascended the final
slope to the huge monastery at the top. Afterwards night fell, and
the moon shone over the huge boulders of towering rocks, and the
whispering wind swung from mass to mass and echoed back again
whence it came. It was an evening of enchantment.

On making other sorties into the country I perceived an innate in-
telligence in the most ignorant peasant. The average one could not
tell the names of the simplest plants or flowers, but one look from
the eye, one tone of the voice, was comprehended in a flash. Even the
gypsy children in the outskirts of Barcelona, with their little dirty
feet and tattered clothing, who danced weird dances and flattered
strangers for pennies, had a natural brightness beyond belief.

But this intelligence was not being directed, and one reason was
inherent in the rebellious nature of the Catalan ; he would have pre-
ferred no system of government at all if that had been possible, for
he was restless and tumultuous under restraint.

When I saw children leading the blind about the streets day after
day, I asked, "Don't they have to be in school ? Isn't education made
compulsory by the Government?"

I was laughed at. "If the Government sent our children to school,
we would know it was the wrong sort of school."

Parents who could afford it, however, were willing enough to
have them go to Ferrer's schools. Two thirds of the Spanish people
had not been able to read or write before his time. The teacher, who
worked constantly all the year round, averaged about sixteen dollars
a month. "He is hungrier than a schoolmaster" was a household
axiom.

THE PEASANTS ARE KINGS 163

Since Ferrer's first school had opened fourteen years previously,
some forty-six had begun to operate, and, in addition, most towns
of any size had at least one rationalist school which was maintained
by the workers and also used Ferrer's texts. The groundwork was
then being laid for the children of yesterday to become the leaders
in today's fight. The pupils I saw at near-by Sabadella, at Granada,
and at Seville, were being taught the processes of life from the cell
up, and their instructors were really trying to give them a scientific
instead of a theological attitude.

Because of the long mental and physical isolation imposed upon
them by the Church, which controlled all education, five thousand
towns and villages could be reached only by trails and tracks. The
Church had objected to having roads built because, once transportation
were made more accessible, women could more easily leave their
homes in the country and go to the city where evil awaited them —
their morals were being safeguarded by cowpaths.

Most of Spain was a gaunt, denuded, tragic country with vast,
desolate steppes and red, impoverished soil which gave the feeling it
had been soaked in human blood for centuries. Certainly the spill-
ing of blood had been a matter of indifference in Spanish history. In
a sense the whole people were lawless, hostile to rulers. Every child
knew the evils of El Caciquismo. Some Spaniard has said, "Democ-
racy, Republicanism, or Socialism have in reality little to do in our
country, for we do not willingly accept either king, president, priest,
or prophet."

The worker in Catalonia had small faith in government, no matter
what the brand, and kept straight to the one issue — revolution
through economic action, chiefly the general strike. He did not look
upon the Government as a vague, mysterious something for the deeds
or blunders of which no one could be blamed; he demanded that
those in authority should give accounting for the results of their
authority. He never forgot a wrong, and usually those responsible
paid the bill. I sometimes thought his "attempts" were carried out
more from a spirit of revenge and individual hatred than as a social
protest.

At the head of the Rambla was a great square, the Plaza de la
Constitucion, and there each day from five to six the populace took

164 MARGARET SANGER

its airing. Thousands of feet had so worn the pavement that it needed
replacement. One noon the square was torn up. Nobody could walk
there for twenty-four hours, the workmen were busy, ropes were
placed across both ends of the promenade, and a huge sign was
erected, "No trespassing allowed. By Order of the Government."

Loiterers gathered to look at the proclamation. They began talk-
ing, their gestures growing more and more vehement, until finally
they pulled down the ropes and deliberately trod on the fresh con-
crete. They were not going to be forbidden by the Government ! The
entire job had to be done over again, and I noticed the next night
six mounted police were guarding all four sides. But nobody seemed
to give either incident the slightest attention.

Catalans were a race of individualists, each a law unto himself.
Their most marked characteristics were independence and personal
dignity. Even Pepet, the waiter at my hotel, knew how to use his
freedom. Sometimes he calmly left the dining room and went down
the street for a shave while we were having our soup. He eventually
returned for the following course, happy and clean, his absence un-
reproved.

Whenever the conversation of the guests interested him, Pepet en-
tered in quite as naturally as though he were sitting and being served
instead of serving. In any other country this would have been resented
as insolence, but here every courtesy and respect was shown to him
just as he showed it to others. If you said you were going to go by a
certain tram to a certain place to be there at three in the afternoon,
he interrupted, "Pardon me, Senora, you do not need to be there un-
til four-thirty, and it is much better to go by this other route."

Like the rest I said, "Right, Pepet, we shall take your advice."

With the expulsion of the Jews from Spain vanished the driving
force for commercial initiative, a quality, fortunately or unfortu-
nately, greatly lacking in the country. Perez Galdos said :

The capital defect of the Spaniards of your time is that you live
exclusively the life of words, and the language is so beautiful that
the delight in the sweet sound of it woos you to sleep. You speak too
much. You lavish without stint a wealth of phrases to conceal the
poverty of your actions.

THE PEASANTS ARE KINGS 1 65

I did not believe this entirely true, but without doubt the Spanish
had a maddening habit of procrastination. It was "Si, Si, Sefiora,
assuredly, certainly," all gracious promising — and then nothing hap-
pening. To an American this was especially aggravating, because he
was always in a constant hurry; he expected to see and know the
whole of Spain in a month. But the Spaniard was not to be rushed.
When asked what time it was, he might reply, "Perhaps four hours
more of the sun."

This defiance of clocks and the absence of strain and bustle pleased
me personally. A story was told of a Spaniard going to seek his for-
tune in South America. After finding a position to his satisfaction he
worked three hours and then suddenly asked for his pay. When his
employer requested the cause of his abrupt leave-taking, he ex-
claimed angrily, "Do you think I'm going to spend all my life work-
ing for you ?"

Don Quixote truly represented the Spanish temperament. The
strong enthusiasm which was shown for a project and the still
stronger imagination which not only saw the matter begun but also
finished, was Spanish to the last degree. The knight of La Mancha
thought nothing of invading cities and fighting giants, but it ended
in thinking about it. "I consider all that already done."

Spanish character, so paradoxical, so attractive, and often so diffi-
cult to understand, fascinated me. I could exhaust myself in ad-
jectives— fickle, impetuous, rich-souled, ascetic, passionate, realistic,
individualistic. Courtesy and ceremony were second nature to the
Catalans of Barcelona, supposed to be the most dangerous and law-
less city in Europe, where thousands of anarchists gathered and
plotted and where bombs were thrown wrapped up in flowers.

I remember how on the suburban trams going high into the moun-
tains, sellers of hot and cold omelets ran up and down the station
platforms. Anybody who bought one, before eating it himself, offered
it to all the passengers in the car, even though they might be carrying
their own lunches.

To accept, however, was a shocking breach of good form. The
offerer protested that you must take it, and you had to think fast for
a plausible excuse. "My friends are waiting for me to dine with

1 66 MARGARET SANGER

them," or "I've just had something at the last station." You must
never, never, never accept.

Havelock used to tell of a grave error he had once made when
traveling in Spain. When he had admired a piece of jewelry, the
lady to whom it belonged had removed it promptly and thrust it upon
him, saying, "I am honored to give it to you." She had been so in-
sistent that, though thoroughly uncomfortable, he had taken it — the
very worst thing he could have done. Soon it disappeared from his
effects, but what was his surprise on his next encounter with the
lady to find her wearing it again with no sign of discomposure. Her
servants had been so indignant that one of them had immediately
stolen it back.

Spanish men were not only courteous to women but also to each
other, having no hesitancy at showing their regard and affection.
Even the beggars addressed each other in the most high-flown
phrases, "Your Highness," or "Your Grace." One might ask,
"Where is Your Excellency to sleep tonight?"

"Under the bridge, My Lord."

They lacked that poverty-in-the-soul look that existed in the same
class in other countries. Assuming the condition of one tattered and
ragged specimen to be temporary, I questioned him, "What do you
do ordinarily?"

"I saunter, I idle, I loaf."

"But what work do you do ?"

He drew himself up with the utmost hauteur, and said proudly,
"I do not work. I am a beggar."

Doing business with the Spaniards required a knowledge of finesse
quite foreign to the average American. I, for example, saw a basket
in a shop window which I felt I really must have. My escort and I
went into the store. Since the proprietor did not speak English, all I
could do was gaze longingly, take it in my hand, and ask my com-
panion, "How much do you suppose this is?" He made no answer,
but pointed to something else on the wall, and we left without learn-
ing the price. I thought he was a terribly stupid person.

The next day I passed the same place with Portet, and I begged,
"Oh, do come in and ask how much that basket is. I want to buy it."

THE PEASANTS ARE KINGS 1 67

He smiled at me indulgently. "You know in our country we can-
not just go into places and find out prices. This man is a craftsman.
We will talk to him."

The proprietor and his wife shook hands with us and brought the
best wine from the cellar. Then the former said, "The Sefiora was
here yesterday. Tell us about her."

"She comes from North America," answered Portet.

"Tell us about North America."

After forty minutes of this, during which I kept one eye on the
wicker container but was unable to divert the conversation to it,
we said, "Hasta la vista," and bowed our way out.

A week later Portet and I, following the lodestone of my particu-
lar basket, sought the shop once more. Relations had now been estab-
lished, and we were entitled to ask about it. But we still could not
demand outright, "How much does it cost?" We must say, "This
basket must be worth so and so," making the figure higher than it
should be.

"Oh, no, no, no, no!" the proprietor protested. "It is not worth
that. My humble hands fashioned it. It is hardly worth anything."

He endeavored to make me accept it for nothing. I had to refuse
and once more try to make him take more than its value. Never was
there such a juggling before we finally arrived at the exact amount
of pesetas.

On my departure from the country I had to break through a simi-
lar punctilio. I spent about seven weeks in Barcelona and was never
presented with a hotel bill — none for lodging, for laundry, for meals,
or for extras such as coffee. The day was coming when I must go
back to France, and I did not want too much Spanish money with
me — just enough to take me to the border. From there I had already
purchased my tickets for England.

Each time I mentioned cuenta to the proprietor, bowing and turn-
ing up his palms he answered, "Si, Si, Sefiora," until finally, on my
last morning, I marched resolutely up to the desk and said, "I shall
miss my train if I have to go to the American Express to get more
money. You really must tell me how much I owe."

He went upstairs, I waited. Finally he descended, hjs hair stand-

1 68 MARGARET SANGER

ing on end. He threw the reckoning down on the table with a most
vindictive look. I glanced at it. The total was very low; it could
barely have covered the cost of the food.

"I have been humiliated!" he exclaimed dramatically.

"Whatever is the matter?" I questioned.

"We are living in the most hellish country on earth !"

"Why, what's happened?"

"A lady comes all the way from North America. She visits us,
she stays here, we like her, and I must present her with this sordid
bill!"

Some day when the fighting is over I shall return again to Spain.

Chapter Fourteen

O, TO BE IN ENGLAND

WHEN I reached London it was spring, and beautiful as only
spring in England can be. I longed to get out into the coun-
try and, through the kindness of Dr. Alice Vickery, was soon lodged
in a private home in Hampstead Gardens next door to her quaint,
ivy-covered, red-brick house. In the large garden in back we often
had tea under the blossoming apple trees. There, dressed in gray or
purple, with white collar and a wisp of lace not quite a bonnet on
her head, she entertained the young and modern women of England
who were working for reforms of no matter what kind. Still, at
the age of eighty, she was alert upon all questions of the day, busily
engaged in writing leaflets or articles pointing out the weak spots
in social programs.

Dr. Vickery was so full of the living side of Neo-Malthusianism
that I could ill afford to forego one possible hour with her. Often
when we found ourselves alone in her drawing room I sat at her
feet and heard the story of the pioneer Malthusians, what they had
had to undergo, and what they had accomplished. For my benefit she
brought out of her attic a veritable treasure of the early days — old
circulars, pamphlets, and letters now, I am afraid, destroyed.

Almost every afternoon, taking her walking stick and with Dr.
Binnie Dunlop for a companion, Dr. Vickery boarded the tram to
attend some gathering. She had been one of the first to welcome the
militant suffragettes, and she never missed a suffrage meeting, nor,
for that matter, any other significant one on infant or maternal wel-

169

170 MARGARET SANGER

fare, eugenics, or public health. She always went with the definite
purpose of getting the audience down to fundamentals. In time she
became a familiar figure. As soon as she entered a hall you could
feel those present aligning themselves against her. They knew she
was going to bring up a controversial subject that no one wanted dis-
cussed, such as birth control. It was like casting a boulder into a nice
quiet lake, but, with an unruffled exterior and grim determination,
she invariably rose just the same, asked the chairman to recognize
her, and said her say on the Feminist side of the question. From the
lips of this Victorian old lady it sounded strange to hear frank re-
marks about the importance of limiting offspring. Dr. Dunlop, with
Scotch determination, was also bent on setting people straight; he
followed her and expounded the medical aspects of population.

In June Dr. Vickery asked me to tell my story to a group of her
friends. Among them was Edith How-Martyn, who had recently
graduated from the London School of Economics. But already the
zealous ardor of this small and slight person had landed her in jail
for suffrage. She had now split from Mrs. Pankhurst, unable to
subscribe to the militant policy.

The American woman is apt to say, "Anything I can do for you,
let me know," and then go away, her conscience relieved. The Eng-
lishwoman states definitely that she can get up a meeting, bring you
in touch with so and so, give you money, or get money for you.
Edith How-Martyn in her quiet manner said to me, "I think what
you have told us today should have a larger audience. Will you give
a lecture if we arrange it for you? We'll do the donkey work; all
you have to do is speak."

In a few days the time and place were set. I was to appear in
Fabian Hall the following month under my own name.

The chairs in the auditorium were wooden and the interior was
unheated — not like an American hall. The audience was quite differ-
ent from the little Socialist gatherings of working women I had ad-
dressed at home. The atrocious and hideous English hats gave it an
intellectual and highly respectable air. These representatives of nearly
every social and civic organization in London, had the rationalist at-
titude and preferred to listen to principles and theories. I told them
what I had been trying to do through the Woman Rebel and ex-

O, TO BE IN ENGLAND 171

plained my private and personal conception of what Feminism should
mean; that is, women should first free themselves from biological
slavery, which could best be accomplished through birth control.
This was, generally speaking, the introduction of the term into
England.

Many came up and talked to me afterwards, among them Marie
Stopes, a paleontologist who had made a reputation with work on
coal. Would I dome to her home and discuss the book she was writ-
ing?

Over the teacups I found her to have an open, frank manner that
quite won me. She took me into her confidence at once, stating her
marriage had been unconsummated, and for that reason she was se-
curing an annulment. Her book, Married Love, was based largely
on her own experiences and the unhappiness that came to people
from ignorance and lack of understanding in wedlock, and she
hoped it would help others. She was extremely interested in the
correlation of marital success to tiirth control knowledge, although
she admitted she knew nothing about the latter. Could I tell her
exactly what methods were used and how? In spite of my belief
that the Netherlands clinics could be improved upon, I was fired with
fervor for the idea as such, and described them as I had seen them.

Later when I came back to the United States, I brought with me
the manuscript of Married Love, and tried every established pub-
lisher in New York, receiving a rejection from each. Finally I in-
duced Dr. William J. Robinson to publish it under the auspices of
his Critic and Guide, a monthly magazine which took up many sub-
jects the Journal of the American Medical Association would not
touch. Unfortunately even here it had to be expurgated. When I
cabled Dr. Stopes I had a publisher in New York, her new husband,
H. V. Roe, financed an unabridged English edition which appeared
simultaneously.

No one can underestimate the work Marie Stopes has done.
Though her other books, Radiant Motherhood and Wise Parent-
hood, were limited in value because they were based on limited per-
sonal experience, she has handled sex knowledge with delicacy and
wisdom, placing it in a modern, practical category. She started the
first birth control clinic in England, but she was not a pioneer in the

172 MARGARET SANGER

movement. Annie Besant, Dr. Vickery, the Drysdales, and many
others had plowed the ground and sown the seed. It needed only
a new voice, articulate and clear as hers, to push her into the front
ranks of the movement, where she must have been much surprised^
to find herself.

Many people went out of their way to be kind, to me in those days,
I was often asked to the home of E. P. C. Haynes, solicitor, writer
on freedom of the press, and a fine adviser. Around his table, one of
the grandest set anywhere in England, could usually be found a large
group of distinguished people. Among them was the American Civil
War veteran, Major G. P. Putnam, a dapper, lively, alert little pub-
lisher with a white mustache and cold blue eyes. He was conservative
and formal, but at the same time a firebrand in his fashion and an en-
thusiast for certain issues. Haynes had invited him to hear my views,
and himself introduced the subject of birth control. Thus I was en-
abled to pave the way for having G. P. Putnam's Sons eventually
take over the publication of Married Love in this country, although
not until 193 1, through the Major's efforts, was the ban lifted which
prohibited the importation of the complete edition into the United
States.

Harold Cox, brilliant Member of Parliament and editor of the
Edinburgh Review, was another delightful host at Old Kennards in
Buckinghamshire. In the Review he was constantly helping to form
an enlightened public opinion on birth control, having every argu-
ment at his finger tips and never missing a chance to answer ques-
tions in the London Times.

Hugh and Janet de Selincourt's place at Torrington, Sussex, where
Shelley was born, always was a haven of refuge. After five days'
work in town I could come, tired and pent-up, for a week-end. I
loved the joy and simplicity of the music there, the lighthearted con-
versation, and tea on the lawn. From there you saw English ivy
climbing up to the thatched roof, and a pond, a small one, which had
been converted into a swimming pool. The general impression was
of shrubbery and old walls with fruit trees trellised against them.
Beyond the velvet green grass were red tree roses, beautiful borders
of pink lupins, and delphiniums, the tallest and bluest I have ever
seen, From the dining-room window the effect was that of a tapestry.

0, TO BE IN ENGLAND 1 73

I wanted some day to embody the rambling spirit of this home in one
of my own.

Here again laughter bound me to these people. We laughed and
we laughed and we laughed. Whole days were spent in gaiety over
the most absurd things. Hugh could never quite accept me as a cru-
sader; he went into roars of merriment whenever I mentioned the
subject of population — it was too much for a woman in a yellow
dress to bother about.

But many of my week-ends were spent in "bothering" about it.
At Sunday afternoon labor meetings in London someone was always
holding forth. "Here's a chance for you to talk birth control," Rose
Witcop once urged.

It was an opportunity to reach working people and I agreed, but
lunch of that day found me trembling. Henry Sara, a young man
but old in the ways of the speaker, noticed I was not eating or drink-
ing and could hardly utter a word. "I say, what's the idea of all this
worry? What you must think about is that everybody there comes
merely to hear somebody or anybody. They've no notion what you're
going to say. Anything is all right with them. Get that in your mind
and stop worrying."

His friendly encouragement gave me a little more fortitude, but
on the way to the hall Rose Witcop took me severely to task for the
trembling, which I seemed unable to stop. "These are just plain
people you're going to speak to. It's utter nonsense to be nervous
about it."

When Rose stood up to introduce me, she began, "Comrades — "
There was a long pause. For the second time she tried in a less as-
sured tone, "Comrades — " Another interval and a third time, in a
voice so weak she herself could hardly hear it, she attempted, "Com-
rades— " Then, barely whispering, "Excuse me," she sat down. By
comparison my speech was not bad.

Writing at this time was a means of expression much easier than
speaking. I had not forgotten my subscribers to the Woman Rebel.
I had to fulfill my obligations and supply something to take the place
of the three issues which I had been unable to furnish them. There-
fore, I wrote three pamphlets on methods of contraception in Eng-
land, the Netherlands, and France respectively. Printing them cost

174 MARGARET SANGER

me a considerable amount of money. My friends in Canada, knowing
I was not affluent, now and then when they had a little windfall or
unexpected dividend sent me small checks of from five to ten
pounds, saying, "To use for your work." These had come in quite
often.

( On one occasion I had squeezed my pocketbook dry paying for
the last pamphlet ; I had not another penny to buy stamps. Ten days
had gone by, and I kept wishing something might come in to help
me out. That morning a letter arrived. I tore it apart and a money
order dropped out. Hurrying as fast as I could to the post office
I received the cash, spent it all on stamps, and hastened back in
the hope of getting the whole edition off on the Arabic; in wartime
sailings had to be considered. One batch of envelopes had already
gone into the pillar box, and I was just finishing addressing and
stamping the second lot when I heard the knocker on the door be-
low clatter through the house. It had the ring of authority and
sounded so ominous that I felt it must have something to do with me.

Sure enough, in a few moments a bobby and a man in plain clothes
appeared at my threshold. They asked whether I were the person who
had been sending quantities of mail to a foreign address.

"Yes," I admitted in a small voice, wondering what on earth was
going to happen now.

The bobby came closer, showed me an unopened envelope, and
demanded sternly, "Did you post this?"

"I think so."

"Madam, in England we never put His Majesty on upside down.
We do not represent our King standing on his head. Will you please,
in affixing your stamps, pay attention to the customs of our coun-
try?"

The care with which I stuck on the remainder right side up de-
layed me so that I barely made the Arabic. Only then did I have
time to read the letter. I took it out of my bag, thinking how won-
derful it was of my friends to send me the money and how much
good I had been able to do with it. To my consternation and amaze-
ment it was not for my use, but to buy gifts — certain books to be sent
back as soon as possible.

The money was gone and the presents could not be purchased.

O, TO BE IN ENGLAND 175

After all this rush and pother the Arabic was torpedoed and went
down with the entire two thousand pamphlets. I made another effort,
this time successfully completed, and shaped an article on Emerson,
Thoreau, and Humphrey Noyes and the Oneida Community, about
whom the English were talking.

Meanwhile I had written to Canada apologizing and saying I ex-
pected shortly to be able to fulfill the commissions. I now had an
opening ahead of me for a career abroad. Portet's publishing house
in Barcelona was closely allied with others in Paris. Through him I
was offered the job of choosing appropriate books in English, whicll
could be published in both French and Spanish, especially works
that would be of help to women and labor. The salary was satisfac-
tory, the job itself interesting, and it gave promise of permanency as
soon as the War should be over. I had almost decided to take it,
even selecting a little house in Versailles with sunny rooms and a
garden for the children.

There was only one drawback — the subtle, persistent dread that
something was wrong with Peggy. Night after night her voice star-
tled me from deep sleep and left me in a state of agitation until I
received the next letter containing news that all was going well. I
tried to dismiss this fear and would have it partially submerged, but
always the same troubled voice rang in my ears, "Mother, Mother,
are you coming back?"

One definite though inexplicable experience kept puzzling me.
As I unclosed my eyes in the morning, or even before I was completely
awake, I became conscious of the number 6, as though that numeral
were repeating itself again and again in my drowsy mind. I often
tried to fit it into some event of the day — six o'clock, sixpence, the
price of tea, or anything else amusing, and as casual or silly as I
could make up. This I did to protect myself against the premonition
which seemed at first to come upon me with the recurrence of this
number. Later, like a leaf on a wall calendar, NOV. 6 stood out.
'/When the publisher asked me to commit myself by signing a
three-year contract to stay in Paris, I said, "Yes, I will if you'll
guarantee to lock me up or send me to Africa or the North Pole until
after November 6th."

"Why November 6th?"

176 MARGARET SANGER

"I don't know, but I'm certain that something important is to oc-
cur on that day, something different, and something which will affect
my entire future."

He drew up our plans as of January 1st of the following year.

Edith Ellis was lecturing in America, and by letter we arranged
for her to bring back Peggy and Grant, because it appeared I might
be staying for some time. Then, since only Peggy seemed lonely
and in need of her mother and Grant was happy in school, it was
determined he should be left there. Edith was to sail with Peggy on
the Lusitania.
i When word was flashed that the liner had been torpedoed, I stood
in the middle of the night in front of the Cunard office, scanning
with horror the mounting ranks of missing and dead. Not until
two in the morning was the list complete and could I breathe once
more ; neither Peggy's nor Edith's name was on it. Edith had received
one of those slips warning prospective passengers that the ship might
be blown up, and was one of the few who had heeded the admonition
and transferred to another boat. jEven so, the thought of being re-
sponsible for Peggy had been too alarming and she had decided not
to bring her.

The War had sent many Americans back from Europe and Bill
had returned to New York. I had had a detailed letter from him
describing the stirring events of the previous December. A man in-
troducing himself as A. Heller had called upon him at his studio
and requested a copy of Family Limitation, pleading that he was
poor, had too large a family, and was a friend of mine. Bill said he
was sorry but we had agreed that I was to carry on my work inde-
pendently of him, and he did not even think he had any of the
pamphlets. However, the man's story was so pathetic that he rum-
maged around and by chance found one in the library drawer.

A few days later Bill opened the door to a gray-haired, side-
whiskered six-footer who lost no time in announcing, "I am Mr.
Comstock. I have a warrant for your arrest on the grounds of cir-
culating obscene literature." Accompanying him was the so-called
Heller, who turned out to be Charles J. Bamberger, an agent of the
New York Society for the Suppression of Vice. The three departed

O, TO BE IN ENGLAND 1 77

but Bill soon found himself in a restaurant instead of the police sta-
tion. When he protested that he wished to consult a lawyer with-
out delay, Comstock, between mouthfuls of lunch, offered advice.
"Young man, I want to act as a brother to you. Lawyers are ex-
pensive and will only aggravate your case." Here he patted Bill on
the shoulder. "Plead guilty to this charge, and I'll ask for a sus-
pended sentence."

Bill's answer was that, though he had been in Europe when the
pamphlet had been written, he believed in the principles embodied in
it, and that, therefore, his own principles were at stake. He would
not plead guilty. "You know as well as I do, Mr. Comstock, there's
nothing obscene in that pamphlet."

"Young man, I have been in this work for twenty years, and
that leaflet is the worst thing I have ever seen."

This sort of conversation went on all afternoon; Comstock even
tried to bribe Bill to turn states' evidence by disclosing my where-
abouts. It was his custom to arrive at the police station so late that
his prisoner could not communicate with a lawyer or bonding of-
fice and had to spend the night in jail. He could then make a state-
ment to the papers that his captive had been unable to secure bail.

When Comstock and Bill at last reached the Yorkville Police
Court and the clerk had asked the latter how he wished to plead,
Comstock spoke for him, "He pleads guilty."

"I do not," expostulated Bill. "I plead not guilty."

He was arraigned and bail fixed at five hundred dollars, but he
was obliged to spend thirty-six hours in jail before it could be pro-
cured.

In September I had word that, after several postponements, his
trial had finally come up before Justices Mclnerney, Herbert, and
Salmon. He started to read his typewritten statement. "I admit that
I broke the law, and yet I claim that in every real sense it is the law
and not I that is on trial here today."

Justice Mclnerney interrupted him. "You admit you are guilty,
and all this statement of yours is just opinions. I'm not going to1
have a lot of rigmarole on the record. We've no time to bother. This
book is not only indecent but immoral. Its circulation is a menace

178 MARGARET SANGER

to society. Too many women are going around advocating woman
suffrage. If they would go around advocating bearing children we
should be better off.

"The statute gives you the privilege of being fined for this of-
fense, but I do not believe this should be so. A man, guilty as you
are, ought to have no alternative from a prison sentence. One hun-
dred and fifty dollars or thirty days in jail."

"Then I want to say to the court," shouted Bill, leaning forward
and raising his hand for greater emphasis, "that I would rather be
in jail with my self-respect than in your place without it!"

Although he was convinced of the justice of my cause, this was
the first and only copy of the pamphlet he had ever given out It
was one of life's sharpest ironies that, despite our separation, he
should have been drawn into my battle, and go to prison for it.

When I received Bill's letter bearing this news, I tore across the
lawn to Dr. Vickery's. Dr. Drysdale happened to be there, and in
his indignation his face became red and his hands were clenched. He
tramped up and down the floor in a frenzy of rage that such a thing
could be done to any human being. I am still touched when I think
of this mild, gentle person being moved to depths of anger over an
injustice which did not affect him personally.

The question before me was, "Should I go back?" As had gone
Bill's trial so would probably go my own. I did not want to sacrifice
myself in a lost cause. I was young, and knew I should be used for
something. Temporarily postponing my final answer to the publish-
ing house, I decided to return to the United States, but only long
enough to survey the situation, to gather up my children. I intended,
if possible, to come back to that little house in Versailles.

T

Chapter Fifteen

HIGH HANGS THE GAUNTLET

"Let God and man decree
Laws for themselves and not for me;
Their deeds I judge and much condemn
Yet when did I make laws for them?"

A. E. HOUSMAN

. fff- fff- fff- fff- fff- fff- fff- fff- fff-
5SSr N\V* \\V* \W \W \W SiW VW V»V*

HE end of September, 19 15, I set sail from Bordeaux. \[ re-
member how interminable that voyage was across the dan-
gerous, foggy Atlantic. The shadow of the Lusitania hung over us.
The ship was absolutely dark, and tension crackled in the very air.
My own thoughts were black as the night and the old nervousness,
the nervousness that came with a queer gripping at the pit of the
stomach, was upon me ; a dread presentiment and a foreboding were
with me almost incessantly.

When I succeeded in snatching a few hours' sleep I was startled
out of unpleasant dreams. One of them was of attempting to strug-
gle through a crowded street against traffic; I was pushed to the
curb and had to make my way cautiously. The mechanical, autom-
aton-like crowds were walking, walking, walking, always in the
opposite direction. Then suddenly in my dream the people turned
into mice — thousands and thousands of them ; they even smelled like
mice. I awakened and had to open the porthole to rid the room of
that musty smell of mice.

At last the lights of Staten Island, winking like specters in the
dim dawn, signaled our safe arrival at quarantine. As the ship sidled
along the wharf at West Fourteenth Street on that gray October
morning, a new exhilaration, a new hope arose in my heart.

To see American faces again after the unutterable despair of

179

l8o MARGARET SANGER

Europe, to sense the rough democracy of the porters and of the
good-hearted, hard-boiled taxi-drivers ; to breathe in the crisp, elec-
tric autumn air of home — all these brought with them an irresistible
gladness. Because I wanted the feeling to linger, I refused a taxi,
picked up my small bag, and walked away from the pier, looking
about.

[At the first news stand I passed I caught sight of the words,
"What Shall We Do About Birth Control?" on the cover of the
Pictorial Review. It seemed strange to be greeted, not by friends
or relatives, but by a phrase of your own carried on a magazine. I
purchased it and, singing to myself, went on to a hotel where the
children were brought to me. I cannot describe the joy of being re-
united with them.

That evening I sat down at my desk and wrote several letters. I
notified Judge Hazel and Assistant District Attorney Content that
I was now back and ready for trial, and inquired whether the in-
dictments of the previous year were still pending; I was politely
informed that they were.

A note more difficult to compose went to the National Birth Con-
trol League, which had been re-organized in my absence under the
leadership of Mary Ware Dennett, Clara Stillman, and Anita Block.
To it had been turned over all my files, including the list of sub-
scribers to the Woman Rebel. I asked them what moral support I
could expect from the League, saying this would help to determine
the length of my stay.

Mrs. Stillman, the secretary, invited me to call a few days later at
her home, where an executive meeting was to convene. I went with
keen anticipation, totally unprepared for the actual answer. The
committee had met. Mrs. Dennett, Mrs. Stillman, and Anita were
all there. Mrs. Dennett spoke for the group ; the National Birth Con-
trol League disagreed with my methods, my tactics, with everything
I had done. Such an organization as theirs, the function of which was
primarily to change the laws in an orderly and proper manner, could
not logically sanction anyone who had broken those laws.

After delivering this ultimatum, Mrs. Dennett walked to the door
with me. Would I mind giving her the names and addresses of those
socially prominent and distinguished persons I had found on my

HIGH HANGS THE GAUNTLET l8l

European trip to be interested? Heartsick as I was over my recep-
tion, I was also amused at her shrewdness.

Mrs. Dennett was a good promoter and experienced campaigner,
a capable office executive, an indefatigable worker for suffrage and
peace, with a background that might have been invaluable. I often
regretted that we could not have combined our efforts. Had we been
able to do so the movement might have been pushed many years
ahead:

My fourth communication was to Dr. William J. Robinson, an
emigre from the land of orthodox medicine, who was possessed of
a sensitivity to current moods. When he had realized that Will
Durant's lectures had aroused interest in sex psychology, he had
stepped in to speak to larger audiences, using a more popular ap-
proach, although, as far as I know, he had never publicly discussed
the prevention of conception.

Dr. Abraham Jacoby, beloved dean of the profession, in accept-
ing the presidency of the Academy of Medicine, had backed birth
control, and through Dr. Robinson's endeavors a small committee
had later been formed to look into it. From the reports that had
come to me I could not discover whether any harmonious agreement
that the subject lay within the province of medicine had been made.
To my inquiry Dr. Robinson replied that the committee had met
only once and he considered I could expect no support from them.
He enclosed a check for ten dollars towards the expenses of my trial.

Here were two disappointments to face. Both these organizations
had seemed so well suited to continue progress: one to change the
laws, the other to take proper medical charge. Neither had fulfilled
my hopes and therefore I felt I had to enter the fray again. My
burning concern for the thousands of women who went unregarded
could apparently find no official endorsement ; birth control was
back again where it had started. I was convinced I had to depend
solely upon the compassionate insight of intelligent women, which
I was certain was latent and could be aroused.

But these problems were suddenly swept aside by a crisis of a
more intimate nature, a tragedy about which I find myself still un-
able to write, though so many years have passed.

A few days after my arrival Peggy was taken ill with pneumonia.

1 82 MARGARET SANGER

When Mr. Content telephoned to say I had better come down and
talk it over, I could not go. He was extremely kind, assuring me
there was no hurry and he would postpone the trial until I was
free. This allowed me to devote my whole attention and time to her.

Peggy died the morning of November 6, 191 5. ;

The joy in the fullness of life went out of it then and has never
quite returned/; Deep in the hidden realm of my consciousness my
little girl has continued to live, and in that strange, mysterious place
where reality and imagination meet, she has grown up to woman-
hood. There she leads an ideal existence untouched by harsh actuality
and disillusion.

[ Men and women from all classes, from nearly every city in Amer-
ica, poured upon me their sympathy. Money for my trial came
beyond my understanding — not large amounts, but large for the
senders — from miners of West Virginia and lumbermen of the
North Woods. Some had walked five miles to read Family Limita-
tion; others had had it copied for them. Women wrote of children
dead a quarter of a century for whom they were still secretly mourn-
ing, and sent me pictures and locks of hair of their own dead babies.
I had never fully realized until then that the loss of a child remains
un forgotten to every mother during her lifetime. \

Public opinion had been focused on Comstock's activities by
Bill's sentence, and the liberals had been aroused. Committees of two
and three came to request me to take up the purely legislative task
of changing the Federal law. Aid would be forthcoming — special
trains to Congress, investigations, commissions, and victory in sight
before the year was over! It was tempting. It seemed so feasible
on the surface, so much easier than agonizing delays through the
courts. Many others advised me just as before that in pleading
guilty I was choosing the best field in which to make my fight.

One of those to urge me towards a middle course was Max
Eastman, who possessed an unusual evenness of temper and toler-
ance towards all who opposed him as well as a keen mind and keen
imagination which followed hypotheses to logical conclusions. This
soft-voiced, lethargic poet, mentally and emotionally controlled, had
too great a sense of humor and ability in visualizing events in their
proper perspective to advocate direct action.

HIGH HANGS THE GAUNTLET 183

Max made an appointment for me to see Samuel Untermyer, au-
thority on constitutional law and a person to whom liberals turned
because of the fight he had put up against the trusts; he might
straighten out the legal aspects. I found him enthroned in his lux-
urious office amid the most magnificent American Beauty roses —
dozens and dozens and dozens. With his piercing eyes and head too
large for his frame, he appeared a disembodied brain. Though the
appointment had been made with difficulty — writing and telephon-
ing back and forth through secretaries to be verified — time now
was nothing to him. He was so smooth, so courteous, so sympathetic,
so unhurried; he seemed to understand and to be ready to lift the
load of legal worry from my mind.

Picking up the telephone, he said, "Get me Mr. Content." Then,
"Harold, come on over to my office and bring your record on Mrs.
Sanger."

When the District Attorney had arrived, Mr. Untermyer' s whole
voice changed. He spoke sternly to the young man. "Why, Harold,
what are you trying to do — persecuting this little woman, so frail
and so delicate, the mother of a family? You don't want to put her
behind bars, do you? She's doing a noble work in the world and
here you are behaving like this! Are you representing the Govern-
ment or are you merely prejudiced in your own behalf?"

Mr. Content replied respectfully, "Well, Mr. Untermyer, we don't
want to prosecute Mrs. Sanger, but we want her to promise to obey
the law."

"Has she broken the law ?"

"We have positive proof that she has violated it on a very large
scale."

Mr. Untermyer immediately assured him, "Why, of course, she'll
promise not to break any more laws. Is that all it is? You just quash
that indictment and forget about it."

Mr. Content left. Mr. Untermyer turned to me genially and said,
"Well, you see ? We've fixed that up."

"What's going to happen? The law will be the same, won't it?"

"Why, yes."

"What was that you said about a promise?"

"Oh, yes, write me a letter saying you won't break the law again."

184 MARGARET SANGER

"I couldn't promise that, Mr. Untermyer."

"What?"

"No, I couldn't do that. The law is there. Something must hap-
pen to it."

"The law may not be what it should be, but you'll never get any-
where by violating it. It must be changed by legal methods ; gather
all your friends and go to Congress."

Again I stated my position. The law specified obscenity, and I had
done nothing obscene. I even had the best of the Government as re-
garded the precise charge. I had not given contraceptive information
in the Woman Rebel, and therefore had not violated the law either
in spirit or principle. But I had done so in circulating Family Limi-
tation, and that would inevitably be brought up. I really wanted this,
so that birth controj would be defined once and for all as either
obscene or not obscene.

Mr. Untermyer took down one of his ponderous books and read
over the section in question. Again he said, "The evidence is that
you have violated the law. We don't separate the spirit from the
letter. It is all there. It seems to me that pleading guilty would let
you out of your troubles without loss of dignity. You should con-
sider yourself fortunate at the suggested outcome. You can gain
nothing by trial. You cannot even get publicity in these days when
the papers are crowded with war news and the big events of history
are happening."

I still could not admit his interpretation. You had to differentiate
between the things mentioned in that law and actual obscenity; the
courts would some day have to decide on this.

"You have no case," Mr. Untermyer persisted. "If you have
broken the law, there is nothing anyone can do or say to argue that
fact away. We must prevent your going to jail, however. I'll see
what I can do."

"I'm not concerned with going to jail. Going in or staying out
has nothing to do with it. The question at stake is whether I have
or have not done something obscene. If I have done nothing obscene
I cannot plead guilty."

Mr. Untermyer was upset. Instead of his former warmth I was
aware of a curt and cold politeness. I went from his office feeling I

HIGH HANGS THE GAUNTLET 1 85

had had an opportunity to make a powerful friend and had lost it
by refusing to accept the legal point of view.

Max also was decidedly angry. His attitude was, "We tried to
help you, and you declined help." He wrote formally:

You could accompany your plea of guilty with a statement, both
before the Court and for the press, which would make it a far more
signal attack upomthe law to whose violation you would be pleading
guilty than a plea of not guilty. It would do a thousand times more
good. At the same time it would satisfy your pride, or your feeling
that you ought to be brave enough to stand up for what you think,
or whatever it is that is making you refuse the advice of counsel.

I would not plead guilty on any count. They could not make me.
I felt deep within me that I was right and they were wrong. I still
had that naive trust that when the facts were known, the Govern-
ment would not wilfully condemn millions^0f wdnten to death, mis-
ery, or abortion which left them physically damaged and spiritually
crippled.

Clarence Darrow and other liberal lawyers from various cities
generously offered to come to New York to present the case free
of charge, but after my Untermyer interview I was convinced that
the quibbles of lawyers inevitably beclouded the fundamental issues ;
I had to move people and persuade them emotionally. I had no prac-
tice in public speaking ; mine was the valor of faith. However, I was
certain that speaking from the fullness of my heart I would be
guided by the greatness and profundity of my conviction. In spite
of the old adage that "he who has himself for a lawyer has a fool
for a client," I was confident that any jury of honest men would
acquit me.

I asked Mr. Content to put my case on the calendar as soon as
possible. It was called for the end of November, then set for Janu-
ary 1 8th, then January 24th. I used to go almost weekly to demand
that it take place, always stressing the fact that I wanted a trial by
jury. One of the judges that I came before in these various courts
had previously asked me in a personal letter to send him Family
Limitation, and I had mailed it to him with my compliments. The
twinkle in his eyes was reflected in mine; we both knew that he as
well as I had been technically breaking the law.

1 86 MARGARET SANGER

As the New York Sun commented, "The Sanger case presents
the anomaly of a prosecutor loath to prosecute and a defendant
anxious to be tried." The newspapers were taking ever-increasing
notice. A photograph of myself and my two young sons circulated
widely and seemed to alter the attitude of a heretofore cynical pub-
lic. At that time I thought the papers were against me, but looking
over these old clippings today I realize this was merely the imper-
sonality of the news columns. Their editorial hesitancy made them
appear, like all other conservative and reactionary forces, my op-
ponents. But the rank and file of American newspaperdom, though
they must always have their little jokes, have always been sympa-
thetic.

They printed the letter to Woodrow Wilson, initiated by Marie
Stopes. It "begged to call the attention" of the President to the fact
that I was in danger of criminal prosecution for circulating a pam-
phlet on birth control, which was allowed in every civilized country
except the United States; that England had passed through the
phase of prohibiting this subject a generation before; and that to
suppress serious and disinterested opinion on anything so important
was detrimental to human progress. It respectfully urged the Presi-
dent to exert his powerful influence in behalf of free speech and the
betterment of the race. \This letter was invaluable by reason of its
signatories — Lena Ashwell, William Archer, Percy Ames, Aylmer
Maude, M. C. Stopes, Arnold Bennett, Edward Carpenter, Gilbert
Murray, and H. G. Wells, whose name was newsj If a group of such
eminence in England could afford to stand by me, then the same
kind of people here might be less timorous.

As public sentiment grew, telegrams and letters showered upon
Judge Clayton demanding the dismissal of the charges against me.
He piled them in wastebaskets and remarked in a bored tone to
Mr. Content, "Take these Sanger letters away." That I was pre-
paring to go to court undefended by counsel was making the mat-
ter harder for them.

My radical allies were, according to their habit, collecting money
for my defense, but this had no effect on my private financial status.
My sister, Ethel, who was living with me, thought I ought to be

HIGH HANGS THE GAUNTLET 1 87

considering the matter. One day she said, "I've a good case for
you. Wouldn't you like to take it?"

"What kind?"

"Maternity. She expects to be delivered in a day or two — probably.
a Caesarian. She asked for me, but I'd rather you had it."

"I'm not interested, thank you. I've given up nursing."

"Well, Mrs. Sanger," she remarked ironically, "would you mind
telling me what you're going to do to earn your living?"

"I'm not interested in earning my living. I've cast myself upon
the universe and it will take care of me."

She looked at me sadly and with worried apprehension.

Three days later Ethel received the anticipated summons. On her
way out she picked up the mail at the door. In it was a letter from
a California acquaintance of hers who did not know where I was
but had her address. "Will you please give the enclosed forty-five
dollars to Margaret Sanger from her sympathizers?"

Ethel handed it to me with the resigned comment, "Well, here's
your check from God."

The editor of the Woman Rebel had struck her single match of
defiance, but she could be of slight significance in the forward march
towards "women's rights." In Feminist circles I was little known.
With my personal sorrow, my manifold domestic duties, my social
shyness, I avoided meeting new people. My attitude thus created
some reluctance among those who might otherwise have hastened
to my aid. Indeed, I wanted a certain type of support, but I could
not take the initiative in asking for it.

This was suddenly done for me. One afternoon I was invited
to a tea arranged by Henrietta Rodman, Feminist of Feminists, in
her Greenwich Village apartment. Wells was particularly sanctified
among her group and I must be all right if he approved. As a result
of that meeting the suffrage worker,, Alice Carpenter, set the wheels
in motion for a dinner at the Brevoort Hotel to be held January
23rd, the evening preceding my trial. I was to be given a chance
to say my say, speak my piece before a gathering of influential peo-
ple. Although I did not see her until some years after, I thanked her
in my heart many times for what she had done.

1 88 MARGARET SANGER

In the ballroom were collected several hundred people. Mary
Heaton Vorse, Dr. Mary Halton, Jack Reed, Dr. Robinson, Frances
Brooks Ackerman, Walter Lippmann, then of the New Republic,
and Mrs. Thomas Hepburn, the Kathy Houghton of my Corning
childhood, all were there.

As we were about to go in to dinner, Rose Pastor Stokes, the
Chairman, took me aside and said, "Something very disturbing has
happened. We've just been talking to Dr. Jacoby. He has a speech
ready in which he intends to blast you to the skies for interfering
in what should be a strictly medical matter. Remember he's greatly
admired and he's speaking here tonight for the doctors. We meant to
have you come at the end of the program but now we're going to
put you first so that you can spike his guns."

My trepidation was increased. Nevertheless, I plunged into my
carefully prepared maiden speech in behalf of birth control. Fortu-
nately I had already planned to upbraid the doctors who daily saw
the conditions which had so moved me and yet made it necessary for
a person like myself, not equipped as they were, to stir up public
opinion. It was like carrying coals to Newcastle; they should have
been teaching me.

I said I recognized that many of those before me of diverse out-
looks and temperaments would support birth control propaganda
if carried out in what they regarded as a safe and sane manner,
although they did not countenance the methods I had been follow-
ing in my attempt to arouse working women to the fact that having
a child was a supreme responsibility. There was nothing new or
radical in birth control, which Aristotle and Plato as well as many
modern thinkers had demonstrated. But the ideas of wise men and
scientists were sterile and did not affect the tremendous facts of
life among the disinherited. All the while their discussions had
been proceeding, the people themselves had been and still were
blindly, desperately, practicing birth control by the most barbaric
methods — infanticide, abortion, and other crude ways. I might have
taken up a policy of safety, sanity, and conservatism — but would
I have secured a hearing? Admittedly physicians and scientists had
far more technical knowledge than I, but I had found myself in
the position of one who had discovered a house was on fire and it

HIGH HANGS THE GAUNTLET 1 89

was up to me to shout out the warning. Afterwards others, more
experienced in executive organization, could gather together and
direct all the sympathy and interest which had been aroused. Only
in this way could I be vindicated.

Since my charge had forestalled his, the venerable Dr. Jacoby
either had to answer me or shift his ground. He chose the latter
course and talked -on the question of quality in population, which
might perhaps have been construed as in my favor.

Many of the women present were comfortable examples of the
manner in which birth control could enable them to lead dignified
lives. Elsie Clews Parsons made the suggestion that twenty-five who
had practiced it should rise in court with me and plead guilty before
the law. But only one volunteered. What surprised me most was
the voice of Mary Ware Dennett announcing that she represented
the National Birth Control League and that that body was going
to stand behind Margaret Sanger in her ordeal — subscriptions were
urgently needed for the League.

(The next morning when I arrived at nine o'clock at the Federal
Court building more than two hundred partisans were already in
the corridors. A great corps of reporters and photographers was on
hand. The stage had been set for an exciting drama.

Judge Henry D. Clayton and Assistant District Attorneys Knox
and Content arrived at ten-thirty, apparently feeling the effects of the
publicity of the night before.

The moment Knox moved to adjourn for a week I was on my feet
asking immediate trial, but Judge Clayton postponed the case.
Everybody went home disappointed.)

February 18th the Government finally entered a nolle prosequi;
Content explained there had been many assertions that the defend-
ant was the victim of persecution, and that had never been the intent
of the Federal authorities. "The case had been laid before the grand
jurors as impartially as possible and since they had voted an indict-
ment there was nothing that the District Attorney could do but
prosecute. Now, however, as it was realized that the indictment was
two years old, and that Mrs. Sanger was not a disorderly person and
did not make a practice of publishing such articles, the Government
had considered there was reason for considerable doubt."

I9O MARGARET SANGER

Well, when an army marches up the hill and then marches down
again some good excuse must always be given.

All my friends regarded the quashing of the Federal indictment
a great achievement. There was much rejoicing and congratulation,
but they acted as though they were saying, "Now settle down in
your domestic corner, take your husband back, care for your chil-
dren, behave yourself, and no more of this nonsense. Your duty is
to do the thing you are able to do which is mind your home and not
attempt something others can do better than you."

But I was not content to have a Liberty Dinner and jubilate. I
could not consider anything more than a moral victory had been
attained. The law had not been tested. I agreed with the loyal Globe,
which staunchly maintained, "If the matter Mrs. Sanger sent
through the mails was obscene two years ago, it is still obscene." I
knew and felt instinctively the danger of having a privilege under
a law rather than a right. I could not yet afford to breathe a sigh
of relief.

The Federal law concerned only printed literature. My own
pamphlet had given the impression that the printed word was the
best way to inform women, but the practical course of contracep-
tive technique I had taken in the Netherlands had shown me that
one woman was so different from another in structure that each
needed particular information applied to herself as an individual.
Books and leaflets, therefore, should be of secondary importance.
The public health way was through personal instruction in clinics.

\A light had been kindled; so many invitations to address meet-
ings in various cities and towns were sent me that I was not able
to accept them all but agreed to as many as I could. It was no longer
to be only a free speech movement, and I wanted also if possible to
present this new idea of clinics to the country.. If I could start them,
other organizations and even hospitals might do the same. I had a
vision of a "chain" — thousands of them in every center of America,
staffed with specialists putting the subject on a modern scientific basis
through research.

Many states in the West had already granted woman suffrage.
Having achieved this type of freedom, I was sure they would re-
ceive clinics more readily, especially California which had no law

HIGH HANGS THE GAUNTLET 191

against birth control. The same thing would follow in the East. As
I told the Tribune ', "I have the word of four prominent physicians
that they will support me in the work. . . . There will be nurses
in attendance at the clinic, and doctors who will instruct women in
the things they need to know. All married women or women about
to be married will be assisted free and without question."

A splendid promise — but difficult to fulfill, as events were to prove.

Chapter Sixteen

HEAR ME FOR MY CAUSE

"Speak clearly if you speak at all.
Carve every word before you let it fall:

OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES

ONCE Amos Pinchot asked me how long it had taken me to
prepare that first lecture I delivered on my three months' trip
across the country in 191 6.

'About fourteen years," I answered.

I was thinking of all the time that had passed during which ex-
periences, tragic and stirring, had come to me and were embodied
therein.

So much depended on this speech; the women of leisure must be
made to listen, the women of wealth to give, the women of influence
to protest. Before starting April 1st, I tried to put myself in their
places and to see how their interests and imaginations could most ef-
fectively be excited, how the pictures which had so unceasingly be-
set me could best be brought to their minds. I felt certain that if I
could do this, they would do the rest.

But the anxiety that went into the composition of the speech was
as nothing to the agonies with which I contemplated its utterance.
My mother used to say a decent woman only had her name in the
papers three times during her life — when she was born, when she
married, and when she died. Although by nature I shrank from
publicity, the kind of work I had undertaken did not allow me to
shirk it — but I was frightened to death. Hoping that practice would
give me greater confidence, I used to climb to the roof of the Lex-
ington Avenue hotel where I was staying and recite, my voice go-

192

HEAR ME FOR MY CAUSE 1 93

ing out over the house tops and echoing timidly among the chimney
pots.

I repeated the lecture over and over to myself before I tried it
on a small audience in New Rochelle. I did not dare cut myself adrift
from my notes; I had to read it, and when I had finished, did not
feel it had been very successful. By the time I reached Pittsburgh,
my first large city, I had memorized every period and comma, but
I was still scared that if I lost one word I would not know what
the next was. I closed my eyes and spoke in fear and trembling. The
laborers and social workers who crowded the big theater responded
so enthusiastically that I was at least sure their attention had been
held by its content.

It was interesting to watch the pencils come out at the announce-
ment that there were specifically seven circumstances under which
birth control should be practiced.

First, when either husband or wife had a transmissible disease,
such as epilepsy, insanity, or syphilis. •

Second, when the wife suffered from a temporary affection of the
lungs, heart, or kidneys, the cure of which might be retarded through
pregnancy. .

Third, when parents, though normal, had subnormal children.

Fourth, when husband or wife were adolescent. Early marriage,
yes, but parenthood should be postponed until after the twenty-third
year of the boy and the twenty-second of the girl.

Fifth, when the earning capacity of the father was inadequate; no
man had the right to have ten children if he could not provide for
more than two. The standards of living desirable had to be con-
sidered; it was one thing if the parents were planning college edu-
cations for their offspring, and another if they wanted them simply
for industrial exploitation.

Sixth, births should be spaced between two and three years, ac-
cording to the mother's health.

All the foregoing were self-evident from the physiological and
economic points of view. But I wished to introduce a final reason
which seemed equally important to me, though it had not been taken
into account statistically.

Seventh, every young couple should practice birth control for at

194 MARGARET SANGER

least one year after marriage and two as a rule, because this period
should be one of physical, mental, financial, and spiritual adjustment
in which they could grow together, cement the bonds of attraction,
and plan for their children.

Like other professions, motherhood should serve its apprentice-
ship. It was not good sense to expect fruit from buds — yet if woman-
hood flowered from girlhood too soon it did not have a chance to
be a thing in itself. I offered a hypothetical case. Suppose two
young people started out in marriage, ignorant of its implications
and possibilities. The bride, utterly unprepared, returned pregnant
from the honeymoon — headaches, nausea, backache, general fatigue,
and depression. The romantic lover never knew that girl as a
woman ; she forever after appeared to him only as a mother. Under
such circumstances marriage seldom had an opportunity to become
as fine an instrument for development as it might have been.

I wanted the world made safe for babies. From a government sur-
vey significant conclusions had emerged as to how many babies
lived to celebrate their first birthday. These were based largely on
three factors: the father's wage — as it went down, more died, and
as it rose, more survived; the spacing of births — when children
were born one year apart, more died than if the mother were al-
lowed a two- or three-year interval between pregnancies; the rela-
tive position in the family — of the number of second-born, thirty-
two out of every hundred died annually, and so on progressively
until among those who were born twelfth, the rate was sixty out
of a hundred.

I claimed that sympathy and charity extended towards babies
were not enough, that milk stations were not enough, that maternity
centers were not enough, and that protective legislation in the form
of child labor laws was not enough. With all the force I could muster
I insisted that the first right of a child was to be wanted, to be
desired, to be planned for with an intensity of love that gave it its
title to being. It should be wanted by both parents, but especially by
the mother who was to carry it, nourish it, and perhaps influence its
life by her thoughts, her passions, her rebellions, her yearnings.

So that all babies born could be assured sound bodies and sound
minds, I suggested in lighter vein that the Government issue pass-

HEAR ME FOR MY CAUSE 1 95

ports for them, calling the attention of the audience to the fact that
adults in this country would never think of going abroad without a
government guarantee to ensure them safe passage and preservation
against harm or ill-treatment. If this were necessary for grown per-
sons journeying into a foreign land, how much more important
it was to protect children who were to enter into this strange and in-
secure new world.

I reminded them also that no one would consider embarking in the
medical or legal profession without due preparation. Even cooks or
laundresses scarcely applied for positions without experience prov-
ing they were qualified to undertake their tasks. But anyone, no
matter how ignorant, how diseased mentally or physically, how
lacking in all knowledge of children, seemed to consider he or she
had the right to become a parent.

In the same tone I proposed a bureau of application for the un-
born. I pictured a married couple coming here for a baby as though
for a chambermaid, chauffeur, or gardener. The unborn child took
a look at his prospective parents and propounded a few questions
such as any employee has the right to ask of his employer.

To his father the unborn child said, "Do you happen to have a
health certificate?"

And to the mother, "How are your nerves? What do you know
about babies? What kind of a table do you set?"

And to both of them, "What are your plans for bringing me up ?
Am I to spend my childhood days in factories or mills, or am I to
have the opportunities offered by an intelligent, healthy, family life ?
I am unusually gifted," the baby might add. "Do you know how
to develop my talents? What sort of society have you made for the
fullest expression of my genius?"

All babies came back to the practical question, "How many chil-
dren have you already?"

"Eight."

"How much are you earning?"

"Ten dollars a week."

"And living in two rooms, you say? No, thank you. Next, please."

I was trying to make people think in order that they might act.
My part was to give them the facts and then, when they asked what

196 MARGARET SANGER

they should do about them, suggest concrete programs for leagues
and clinics. Many women had far more executive and administra-
tive experience than I, and I still expected them to carry on where
I left off so that I might be free to return to Europe.

My hopes seemed well-founded when many of the Pittsburgh
audience waited afterward to request help in organizing themselves.
Thus the first state birth control league was formed. This and all
subsequent ones I referred to Mrs. Dennett's National Birth Con-
trol League to be under its future direction.,

! That meeting had been held under the sponsorship of Mrs. Enoch
Raugh, a philanthropist of great courage. In the early days almost
everywhere I went'the subject of birth control was one likely to make
conspicuous those who identified themselves with it. Average well-
to-do persons hesitated except for the Jewish leaders in civic affairs,
who, as soon as they were personally convinced, showed no reluctance
in aligning themselves publicly:.

Not so did Chicago respond. Some members of the powerful
Women's City Club had privately asked me to speak, but when the
matter was brought up before their board, the unofficial invitation
was officially canceled. Here again were conservatives enjoying the
benefits of birth control for themselves but unwilling to endorse
it for the less fortunate of their sex. When they did not listen, I
tried to reach the women of the stockyards directly.

So many hundreds of letters had come to me — not only in Eng-
lish, but also in Hungarian, Bohemian, Polish, and Yiddish — clam-
oring for information, that I had every reason to suppose what I
had to say was going to be welcome on Halsted Street. I was in-
credulous when I met an unforeseen resistance.

Hull House and similar settlements had been established to help
the poor to help themselves. But I found that although social
agencies had originally striven to win confidence by opening milk
stations and day nurseries, this aim had been somewhat obscured
in the interests of sheer efficiency. Many welfare workers had come
to treat individuals merely as cases to be cataloged, arrogantly pro-
claiming they knew "what was best for the poor"; a type had de-
veloped, and those who belonged to it were lacking in human sym-
pathy. Instead they expanded their own egos through domination.

HEAR ME FOR MY CAUSE 1 97

Their desire to build up prestige and secure a position of importance
in the community had formed a civic barrier, a wall, in fact, around
the stockyards district, preventing any new concepts, people, or or-
ganizations from coming in without official permission. The stock-
yards women were literally imprisoned in their homes from ad-
vanced ideas unless they went out into other sections of the city.

Because this ridiculous situation had arisen in Chicago, no hall
could be had in the immediate neighborhood. , I could have held no
meeting there had it not been for Fania Mindell, one of the many
idealists of that time who threw themselves into the fight for the
oppressed as an aftermath of their own sufferings and repressions
in Russia. ,She had a devoted and self-sacrificing nature which made
her work, slave, toil for the love of doing it. She made all the ar-
rangements, producing an audience of fifteen hundred from the
labor and stockyards environs.

i These first lectures in Chicago and elsewhere attracted women in
swarms, paying their twenty-five cents to fill the auditoriums; I
remember that one offered her wedding ring as the price of admis-
sion, to be redeemed on pay day. They brought their children, and
more than once I had to lift my voice above the persistent cooing
and gurgling of a front-row baby. There was a natural understand-
ing between infants. If one were given a bottle, another began to
cry. A third in the backjoined the chorus, or a small boy on the side
aisle whispered shrilly, "I wantta go home!" I just ached to see those
many babies, because I knew what their mothers had come for —
definite help to stop having more — and it could not be given them.

Often at these meetings I saw some woman sitting down near
the platform holding a bunch of wild flowers, daisies, Queen Anne's
lace, or butter-and-eggs, waiting to present me with the little bouquet,
to tell me that since she had received my pamphlet, she had "kept out
of trouble." No matter how phrased, the gratitude was genuine.

Over and over again someone popped up in front of me, and ex-
tended a hand, "I used to subscribe to the Woman Rebel. I got all
your pamphlets from England."

When I asked, "What's your name?" with the answer, like a flash,
came the number of children and the locality, and the story sent me
years earlier. And, "Didn't you live in Des Moines?" I continued.

I98 MARGARET SANGER

Seldom was it the wrong place. In this way I came across dozens
of "friends" who had been among the original two thousand.

I was advised by Dr. Mabel Ullrich of Minneapolis not to go
there because the Twin Cities were the most conservative in Amer-
ica. "You won't get six people," she prophesied.

"Do you think I'll get six?"

"Perhaps."
/"Then I'll go."

nI was prepared to speak wherever it was possible, regardless of
attendance. Six people, properly convinced, usually made sixty peo-
ple think before very long. In spite of Dr. Ullrich's warning, hun-
dreds of chairs had to be brought in to the Minneapolis Public Li-
brary to take care of the overflow.

People were frequently surprised at the size of my audiences. I
should have been surprised had it been the other way about, al-
though I did not like too many present because the subject was too
intimate for great numbers in large halls. All came because birth
control touched their lives deeply and vitally ; they listened so earnestly,
so intently that the very atmosphere was hushed and unnaturally
quiet.

Here in Minneapolis arrived a telegram from Frederick A.
Blossom, Ph.D., manager of the Associated Charities of Cleveland,
whom I had met there. Would I speak at the National Social Work-
ers' Conference then being held in Indianapolis? He could not get
me placed on the program, but the two subjects that were currently
arousing considerable interest were the prison reforms instituted
by Thomas Mott Osborne at Sing Sing, and birth control. He
believed it was worth my while to come.

Since I had nearly a week before my scheduled meeting in St.
Louis, the time fitted in very nicely and I seized the occasion. I did
not expect definite action, but I did yearn to arouse dissatisfaction
over smoothing off the top, to say to these social workers plodding
along in their organizations that I thought their accomplishments
were temporary, and that charity was only a feather duster flicking
from the surface particles which merely settled somewhere else.
They could never attain their ideal of eliminating the problems of

HEAR ME FOR MY CAUSE 1 99

the masses until the breeding of the unending stream of unwanted
babies was stopped.

Blossom, polished, educated, and clever, had a charming and
disarming personality, and an ability far above the average. Part
of his work had been to cultivate the rich, and in this he had been
eminently success fut because he was so suave, never waving a red
flag in front of anybody's nose as I did; my flaming Feminism
speeches had scared some of my supporters out of their wits.

This master manager knew exactly what to do and how to go
about it. Notices were posted throughout the hotel and left in every
delegate's mail box, announcing the meeting for four in the after-
noon, the only hour when we could have the big amphitheater. Al-
though round-table discussions were going on at the same time, it
was jammed to the doors; people were sitting on the platform and
on window sills and radiators.

I was almost startled that so many of those from whom I hoped
for co-operation should turn out in such numbers. Walter Lippmann
said, "This will kick the football of birth control straight across
to the Pacific." And, indeed, the social agents, like the plumed
darts of a seeded dandelion puffed into the air, scattered to every
quarter of the country; thereafter, to the West and back again, I
heard echoes of the meeting.

During the previous weeks in various cities it had been hard to
be alone a minute. Women with the inevitable babies kept calling
on me in hotels and so did men setting out to their jobs early in
the morning, carrying their lunch boxes. I was so mentally weary
with strain that it seemed I must get away from humanity for a
little while if I were to retain my sanity. Worst of all was the
ever-present loneliness and grief — the apparition of Peggy who
wanted me to recognize she had gone and was no longer here.

I slipped into St. Louis two days ahead so that I could be by
myself, registering at the Hotel Jefferson and asking not to be dis-
turbed. But the telephone rang before I even had my suitcase un-
packed; a reporter had seen my name at the desk and requested an
interview. I replied I could not give it ; I was not in St. Louis so far
as he was concerned. Saying to myself, "Good, I've escaped that,"

200 MARGARET SANGER

I went to bed. But next morning a ribbon on the front page of his
paper announced I was "hiding" in the city. In my ignorance I had
violated the etiquette observed by welcoming committees, and mine
was highly indignant. I had little rest.

Among the group of backers was Robert Minor, an old friend,
formerly an outstanding cartoonist on the New York World, who
had been dropped because he had refused to draw the kind of pic-
tures about Germany his employers wanted. It had been arranged
that I was to have the Victoria Theater Sunday night, which had
already been paid for in advance so that the meeting could be free.
However, at a quarter to eight when we arrived, the building was
in total darkness and the doors were locked. The proprietor's office
was closed; he was not at home; there was no means of finding
out anything. Actually, he had temporarily effaced himself because
he did not wish to admit that he had been threatened with a Catholic
boycott of his theater, and had been promised protection against a
possible suit for breach of contract.

At least two thousand people had gathered and were filling the
air with catcalls, hisses, hurrahs, cries of "the Catholics run the
town! Break in the door!" Minor urged me to stand up in the car
and give my speech, but without its proper setting I was lost; here
was a type of battle needing an experienced campaigner. Although I
did not feel adequate, I began, but my voice could not surmount
the uproar.

I was barely under way when a police sergeant reached up and
seized my arm. "Here now, you'll have to come down. You can't
talk here."

"Speech ! Speech !" yelled the crowd. "Go on."

But the owner of the car, to my great relief, started his engine.
I sat back in the seat with a thump and off we went.

The incident had repercussions. The Men's City Club, regarding
the event as a blot on the fair name of the town, asked me to speak
at their luncheon the next day, and I promised to wait over. Al-
though forty Catholics then resigned in a body, St. Louis would not
be coerced, and more than a hundred new members joined immedi-
ately.

William Marion Reedy, owner and publisher of the famous

HEAR ME FOR MY CAUSE 201

Reedy 's Mirror, had been at the closed theater. He printed a car-
toon showing the Capitol of the United States with a papal crown
on it, stated editorially that the Pope was now dictating to America
what it should hear and think, and emphasized the consequent dan-
gers to the country if any religious group were allowed such domina-
tion. "No idea let loose in the world has ever been suppressed. Ideas
cannot be jailed in oubliettes/' was his peroration.

After I had left the Middle West and reached the Rocky Moun-
tains the atmosphere changed. I was struck even by the attitude of
the bellboys and waiters at the Brown Palace Hotel in Denver. In
New York you were served by trained foreign men and boys —
Italian and French. Here they were American-born, blue-eyed, fair-
complexioned, strong- jawed. Without bowing or obsequiousness
they brought your food and carried your bags as if doing you a
favor. You hesitated to give them a tip, though, as a matter of fact,
they never refused it.

I loved Denver itself. It seemed to me the women there were the
most beautiful I had seen — fresh, charming, alive. They had long had
the vote and used it effectively. Because they believed in Judge Ben
Lindsey's juvenile court, they had kept him in office in spite of
the concerted antagonism of picturesque but corrupt politicians.

Although Judge Lindsey had bitter enemies in exalted places, he
had loyal friends also. When Theodore Roosevelt had stopped there
in 1 91 2 on his Western Swing, the Judge was facing opposition.
The city fathers did not want to include him as a substantial citizen
on their platform committee of welcome. Roosevelt peered vainly
about among all these bankers and business men. "Where's Ben
Lindsey?" he asked.

"We don't talk about him around here."

"Don't we? Well, he's a friend of mine. I shan't say a word until
Ben Lindsey comes and sits on this platform beside me."

Nor would he speak until Lindsey arrived ; everybody had to wait.

It was a high point for me at this time, so soon after my own
court appearance, to have Judge Lindsey preside at my meeting. For-
merly my listeners, with the exception of Indianapolis, had been
chiefly of the working class. Here they were wives of doctors, law-
yers, petty officials, members of clubs.

202 MARGARET SANGER

I was more than delighted to have an audience which had the
power to change public opinion. The "submerged tenth" had no need
of theories nor the proof of the advantages of family limitation;
they were the proof — the living example of the need. It was vitally
important to have reflective hearers who not only themselves used
contraceptives, but who advanced thought through literature, dis-
cussions, and papers. To them I was telling the story of those mil-
lions who could not come, and trying to relate it as I knew it to be
true. Stimulating them offered the best possibility of getting some-
thing done.

Judge Lindsey invited me to sit on the bench with him the next
morning, and I watched enthralled the way he handled his cases.
The familiar court method was punishment, and the more punish-
ment the better. But he operated on the new psychology. For in-
stance, he attempted to inculcate a sense of responsibility in one boy
who had disobeyed his mother and run away from school, by show-
ing him his indebtedness to her, how he should be helping rather than
causing her grief.

The same tactics were employed in the case of Joseph, charged
with assault on his wife, Nelly, who stood silently in the back-
ground, shawl over her head. Lindsey read the evidence, then said,
"Joseph, come over here."

'Joseph stepped nearer, appearing somewhat guilty, as men of his
status usually did when they came into court.

"What's this I hear about you? Why did you strike Nelly?"

"She made me mad," Joseph mumbled.

"Joseph, turn your head and look at your wife. Look at her!
Look! — thin, pale, weak, and you a big strong man striking that
delicate little woman. Aren't you ashamed of yourself to beat Nelly?
You who promised to love, honor, and protect her?"

The reprimanding lasted fully two minutes. Finally tears began
to spring from Nelly's eyes and to run down her face. She moved
forward, took Joseph by the hand, and said, "Oh, he's not so bad,
Judge." Joseph then embraced her. Instead of punishing him, which
would in effect have also been punishing Nelly, Judge Lindsey put
him on parole to report back in two months' time, and husband and
wife went out arm in arm.

HEAR ME FOR MY CAUSE 203

One of the hardest things for a judge in a lower court to combat
is the prejudice of the police against those who already have records.
Judge Lindsey, when a case came up before him, never took the
word of the ward heelers, but had his own secretary, employed and
paid by him, go to the home and investigate, and he held the case
until this had been done. But I thought then that either Judge Lind-
sey was heading straight for trouble, or Denver had a kingdom of
its own where freedom reigned.

A similar attitude of liberality prevailed on the far side of the
Rockies. In many places where I had previously spoken, policemen
had been stationed at the doors. Occasionally they had even come
to the hotel to read my speech, as at St. Louis and Indianapolis. But
in Los Angeles officials of all the city, even the representatives of
the women's police division, met me at the station or called on me
in a friendly way.

I was still as terrified of speaking as in the beginning; I used to
wake up early in the morning, sometimes before it was light, and
feel a ghastly depression coming over me. I realized it was the im-
pending lecture which was so affecting me, and I waited in trepida-
tion for the hour. My physical illness did not grow better until I
was on my feet and well into my subject.

Though this was my first visit to the West, I had no time for
scenery. Whenever possible I traveled by night and arrived during
the day, and by this stage of my trip I was seemingly always tired.
The dead grind went on and on, an endless succession of getting off
trains, introductions, talking to committees, pouring yourself out —
and nothing happening. Physically and psychically it was one of the
lowest periods of my life.

Someone in San Francisco did a lovely thing for me. I never
knew who she was, but at the end of one meeting she picked me up
in her car and swept me away into a forest of huge, tall trees where
the sun broke through. There she left me for fifteen minutes in the
midst of a cathedral of great evergreens with the sky overhead
and myself alone. I have never forgotten the peace and quiet.

I found the West Coast a lively place. Ideas were being con-
stantly thrashed out. Every discourse had a challenging reception.
Emma Goldman had been there year after year and had stirred peo-

204 MARGARET SANGER

pie to dare express themselves. All sorts of individuals catechized
you, and if you were not well grounded in your subject you were
quickly made aware of your ignorance. The Wobblies spent hours
in libraries, not only keeping warm, but trying to find points on
which to attack the next lecturer who should come to town. Often
those most eager were considered cranks — on diet, free trade, single
tax, and free silver — so familiar that their rising was hailed with
groans. I never minded having questions asked, though everything
I knew was questioned. It was as well for me that, in addition to
my Malthus, I knew my Schopenhauer and Nietzsche, my Henry
George, Marx, and Kropotkin. It seems to me that today the tone
of audiences has deteriorated; queries rarely have the same intel-
lectual grasp behind them.

. My welcome at Portland was delightful. The sixty-year-old poet,
C. E. S. Wood, dapper and gracious, made a practice of greet-
ing personally women speakers, dedicating poems to them on their
arrival, and sending bowers of flowers to their hotel rooms. The
City of Roses did much to entertain its visitors.

Here I was invited by a church to address its congregation fol-
lowing the evening service. I had not been very well in the after-
noon, but I promised over the telephone to be there if I could. I
was late and the meeting had already begun. As I slipped in at the
rear I heard the chairman refer to me as a Joan of Arc. Entirely
too many Joans of Arc were floating about in those days. Not wish-
ing to be a disappointment I turned right around and walked back
to the hotel. Since no one had ever seen me, both my entrance and
exit went unremarked.

I admired robust, vital women; they appeared so efficient, and I
regretted the fact that I did not give the same impression. I felt
that way, but could not help resembling, as someone phrased it, "a
hungry flower drooping in the rain." If I were in a room with
ten people and somebody came in who expected me to be present,
she invariably approached the biggest woman and addressed her,
"How do you do, Mrs. Sanger?" For a brief while I tried to make
myself seem more competent-looking by wearing severe suits, but
this phase did not last ; for one thing, effective simplicity cost money
and I did not have enough to be really well-tailored. However, the

HEAR ME FOR MY CAUSE 205

anonymity due to my appearance was, on the whole, fortunate. I
was always able to go along any street, into any restaurant or shop,
and seldom be identified, and this made it possible for me to main-
tain a relatively private life.

A dinner was given at Portland; the chairman, who had seen
Susan B. Anthony and many other women with causes come and
go, made a short speech of introduction. I rarely remember what
people say on such occasions, but one of her statements has remained
in my mind. "I would like to see Margaret Sanger again after ten
years. Most movements either break you or develop the 'public
figure' type of face which has become hard and set through long
and furious battling. But her cause is different from any other I
have ever known. I should like to see how she comes out of it."

I have thought of this many times — how, if the cause is not great
enough to lift you outside yourself, you can be driven to the point
of bitterness by public apathy and, within your own circle, by the
petty prides and jealousies of little egos which clamor for attention
and approbation.

One of the first persons I met in the city was Dr. Marie Equi, of
Italian ancestry and Latin fire. Definitely, she was an individualist
and a rugged one. Her strong, large body could stand miles and
miles on horseback night or day. She had been brought up in the
pioneer era when medical work was genuine service. If cowboys or
Indians were in fights, difficulties, jail, Dr. Equi was always on
hand to speak a good word for them.

[ It was in Portland that I realized Family Limitation, which had
been crudely and hurriedly written in 1914, needed revising. The
working women to whom it was addressed needed the facts. It had
served its purpose in its unpolished state, but the time had now come
to reach the middle classes, for whom it required a slightly more pro-
fessional tone. Dr. Equi gave me genuine assistance in this matter.

The wider the distribution of the pamphlet, the happier I was.
Since it had not been copyrighted, anybody who wanted to could
reprint as many as he wished, and I.W.W. lumberjacks, for ex-
ample, transients without families who moved to California for the
crop harvesting in the summer, often thus provided themselves with
a little extra money as they journeyed from place to place. When

206 MARGARET SANGER

they unrolled the blankets draped over their shoulders out dropped
a half-dozen or so pamphlets.

An automobile mechanic of Portland had made one of these re-
prints and asked me whether he could sell it at my next meeting.
I myself had never distributed Family Limitation publicly, but if
any local people wanted to do so, I had no objection. Accordingly the
mechanic and two of his friends sold copies and were arrested. Their
trial was postponed so that I could deliver my proposed lectures
in Seattle and Spokane.

When these were over I came back to serve as a witness, and at
another meeting held the night preceding the trial four more of
us were arrested, Dr. Equi, two Englishwomen, and myself. I was
tremendously gratified by seeing women for the first time come out
openly with courage ; over a hundred followed us through the streets
to the jail asking to be "let in too. We also have broken the law."

The city jail was nice and clean and warm. The girls, who were
not locked in cells, scampered around talking over their troubles and
complaints with Dr. Equi, and receiving condolence and wholesome
advice in return.

The seven of us were tried together the next day. Two lawyers
took upon themselves the responsibility of defending us, and they
were splendid. We were all found guilty. The men were fined ten
dollars, which the Judge said they need not pay ; the women were not
fined at all.

The papers made a great to-do about the affair but it was not a
type of /publicity of my choosing and did little to bring the goal
nearer. \The year 191 6 was filled with such turmoil, some of it use-
ful, some not. , The ferment was working violently. Everybody be-
gan starting things here and there. Many radicals, some of whom
I did not even know, were distributing leaflets, getting themselves
arrested and jailed. Meetings were being held in New York on street
corners, at Union Square, Madison Square.

You had to keep a steady head, to be about your business, to make
careful decisions, to waste the least possible time on trivialities; it
was always a problem to prevent emotional scatter-brains from dis-
turbing the clear flow of the stream. The public, quite naturally,

HEAR ME FOR MY CAUSE 207

could not be expected to distinguish between purposeful activities
and any others carried on in the name of the movement.

Emma Goldman and her campaign manager, Ben Reitman, be-
latedly advocated birth control, not to further it but strategically to
utilize in their own program of anarchism the publicity value it
had achieved. Earlier she had made me feel she considered it unim-
portant in the class struggle. Suddenly, when in 1916 it had demon-
strated the fact that it was important, she delivered a lecture on the
subject, was arrested, and sentenced to ten days.

Ben Reitman, who used to go up and down the aisles at meetings
shouting out Emma "Goldman's Mother Earth in a voice that never
needed a megaphone, was also arrested when the police found on
the table of her lecture hall in Rochester several books on birth
control. One of these was by Dr. Robinson, who had hastily pub-
lished a volume purporting to give contraceptive information. The
unwary purchaser discovered when he came to the section supposed
to give him the facts for which he had paid his money that the pages
were blank and empty.

( Of far greater interest to me was the decision of Jessie Ashley,
Ida Rauh, who was Max Eastman's wife, and Bolton Hall, a leader
in the single tax movement, to make test cases on the grounds that
the denial of contraceptive information to women whose health
might be endangered by pregnancy was unconstitutional since the
Constitution guaranteed each individual the right to liberty.) These
three had themselves arrested on birth control charges. They were
all three convicted and given a choice of fines or terms in prison.
They paid the former, announcing that they would appeal, but, most
unfortunately, as it turned out later, they did not carry through their
intentions.

A sympathetic thing if not a wise one was being done by a young
man in Boston named Van Kleek Allison, who started handing out
leaflets to workers as they emerged from factories. Early in the
summer he gave one to a police decoy, was arrested and sentenced
to three years. Dear old Boston, the home of the Puritan, rose in
all its strength and held a huge meeting of protest on his behalf.

This was the occasion of my first heckling. A Jewish convert to

208 MARGARET SANGER

Catholicism, named Goldstein, began belligerently to fling questions
at me. It was not in the sense of trying to find out the answers,
but as though he had them wrapped up in his own pocket and were
merely trying to trap me, and he, in turn, had his answers ready
for mine. But after my Western experiences I was not unprepared
and was aided, furthermore, by other members of the audience who
spoke in my defense when he became almost insulting.

I never made light of questioners and never judged any question
too trivial or unworthy of an honest response. I believed that for
each person who had the courage to ask there must be at least
twenty-five who would like to know, and I have never assumed any-
one was seeking to trick me into giving illegal information, even
though his inquiry might appear as intended to confuse me or be
vindictively thrust at me. I usually replied, "That's an interesting
point. I'm glad you raised it," and then proceeded to discuss it as
best I could.

Another heckling in Albany resulted in a joyous reunion. Some-
body in the audience insisted my work was unnecessary. I would
ordinarily have paid no attention, not considering the statement at
all personal. But there arose a lady, wearing a high lace collar
propped up with whalebones, and a hat that sat flat on her head, a
ghost out of my school-girl days. "I am acquainted with Margaret
Sanger," she stated. "I have slept with her, I have lived with her, I
have worked with her, I have delivered her, and I have named my
baby for her." Here was dear old Amelia come to champion me. Her
type of dress had remained the same as fifteen years before, but so
had her loyalty and wit. The lecture over, we went back together to
her home in Schenectady; she hauled out from the attic scrapbooks
and photographs and snapshots taken at Claverack, and we sat on
the floor and rocked with laughter until three in the morning.

When I returned to New York after my long trip I took a studio
apartment in what seemed like a bit of old Chelsea on Fourteenth
Street way over between Seventh and Eighth Avenues. Gertrude
Boyle, the sculptress, had the one below me, and my sister Ethel moved
in above. Occasionally father came down from Cape Cod to spend
some time with us.

Although it was never quite warm enough, because it lacked cen-

HEAR ME FOR MY CAUSE 209

tral heating, it hardened me physically, and the open fireplaces,
stoked incessantly by expansive and voluble Vito Silecchia, the Ital-
ian coal vendor, kept the air fresh and clean. The lovely high ceil-
ings, the tall windows, and the broad doors flung wide between the
rooms, gave an atmosphere of space, and the marvelous carved wood-
work was a joy. The windows in the rear were draped with light
yellow curtains, reflecting an illusory glow of sunshine. Above one
of these grew a Japanese wistaria vine ; whenever I looked up I saw
this little bit of spring.

Chapter Seventeen

FAITH I HAVE BEEN A TRUANT IN THE LAW

"// a woman grows weary and at last dies from childbearing, it
matters not. Let her only die from bearing; she is there to do it."

MARTIN LUTHER

IN the fall of 191 6 whoever walked along the corridor of the top
floor of 104 Fifth Avenue could have seen the words "Birth
Control" printed on the door leading to an office equipped in
business-like, efficient manner with files and card catalogs. Pre-
siding over it was Fred Blossom, the perfect representative. He had
told me at Cleveland he was tired of ameliorative charity and, want-
ing to do something more significant, had offered six months
for this work. Now indefatigably he wrote, spoke, made friends,
and, most important, raised money. His meals were limited to an
apple for luncheon and a sandwich for dinner; he seldom left the
office until midnight.

Like a vacuum cleaner Blossom sucked in volunteers from near
and far to help with the boxes and trunks of letters which had come
to me from all over the country — one thousand from St. Louis alone.
As long as I had had no stenographic aid I had been able only to
open and read them and put them sadly away. At last with fifteen
or twenty assistants the task began of sorting these out and answer-
ing them. The contents almost invariably fell into certain definite cate-
gories, and I instituted a system so that such and such a paragraph
could be sent in response to such and such an appeal.

We had only one paid stenographer — little Anna Lifshiz, who
soon became far more a co-worker than a secretary. If we had no
money in the bank she waited for her salary until we did. When I met

210

FAITH I HAVE BEEN A TRUANT IN THE LAW 211

Anna's mother, who graced her hospitable home with an old world
dignity, I realized that her daughter's fine character had been directly-
inherited. Every Christmas I used to receive a present of wine and
cakes of Mrs. Lifshiz' own make, and Anna always said when she
brought them, "My mother pr,ays for your health, your happiness,
and that you will keep well." ' ' *

I had been encouraged by the interest aroused during my Western
trip, but was by no means satisfied. The practical idea of giving
contraceptive information in clinics set up for that purpose had
seemed to meet general approval everywhere. Boston at this time
appeared a possible place to begin. Though Allison had to serve
sixty days in the House of Correction at Deer Island, the sum total
of his sensational trial had been good. Before his arrest there had
been no league in Massachusetts, and with his arrest had come
publicity, friends, workers, meetings, letters, interviews, all of wide-
spread educational value.

More important than the enthusiasm which had been stirred up,
the best legal authorities in Boston had decided that contraceptive
information could be given verbally by doctors as long as it was not
advertised. The interpretation to be put on advertising held up the
actual opening of a clinic. The old spirit was there to wage battle
but it was a question of getting leadership, and this did not come
about; no women doctors were willing to take the risk. If the citi-
zens of Massachusetts had then seized the opportunity to broaden
their laws, writers and speakers might now have more freedom in
expressing themselves.

Blossom soon organized the New York State Birth Control
League to change the state law. Beyond introducing a bill it made
little headway and soon expired. It was just one of those many
groups that met and talked and talked and did nothing effective.

The legislative approach seemed to me a slow and tortuous method
of making clinics legal; we stood a better and quicker chance by
securing a favorable judicial interpretation through challenging the
law directly. I decided to open a clinic in New York City, a far more
difficult proceeding than in Boston., Section 1142 of the New York
statutes was definite: No one could give contraceptive information
to anyone for any reason. On the other hand, Section 1145 dis-

212 MARGARET SANGER

tinctly stated that physicians could give prescriptions to prevent con-
ception for the cure or prevention of disease. Two attorneys and
several doctors assured me this exception referred only to venereal
disease. In that case, the intent was to protect the man, which could
incidentally promote immorality and permit promiscuity. I was deal-
ing with marriage. I wanted the interpretation to be broadened into
the intent to protect women from ill health as the result of excessive
childbearing and, equally important, to have the right to control their
own destinies.

To change this interpretation it was necessary to have a test case.
This, in turn, required my keeping strictly to the letter of theylaw;
that is, having physicians who would give only verbal information
for the prevention of disease. But the women doctors who had pre-
viously promised to do this now refused. I wrote, telephoned, asked
friends to ask other friends to help find someone. None was will-
ing to enter the cause, fearful of jeopardizing her private practice
and of running the risk of being censured by her profession; she
might even lose her license.

They had before them the example of Dr. Mary Halton who of
all the women I have known has perhaps the best understanding of
the hidden secrets of the heart. She has never reached her deserts,
and doubtless never will have the honors due her, though she has an
unknown audience who love her not only because she has done some-
thing directly for them but because they have heard of what she
has done for others. She has what to my mind is the attitude of the
real physician; that it is not enough merely to cure ailments — sur-
roundings, heartaches, privations must also be given attention. Her
office is a human welfare clinic to which women of all classes, ages,
nationalities go for advice, occasionally without even return car-
fare. The unmarried ones, who in asking help from doctors or clinics
seldom admit they are unmarried, trust so deeply in Dr. Mary that
they unburden themselves freely.

Dr. Mary had previously been on the staff of the Grosvenor Hos-
pital and had held her evening clinic there. To one of her patients
who had been operated on for glandular tuberculosis she had pre-
scribed a cervical pessary. When a few evenings later the woman

FAITH I HAVE BEEN A TRUANT IN THE LAW 213

had come back to be refitted, Dr. Mary had been out and her substi-
tute, horrified and shocked, had presented the matter to the board.
Dr. Mary had been called before them. She had told them in no un-
certain terms that the giving of contraceptive information to patients
in need of it was part of her work and that she had a right under
the law to do so.

The board had disagreed with her and asked for her resignation.

I did not wish to complicate the quesion of testing the law by
having a nurse give information, because a nurse did not come un-
der the Section 1145 exception. But since I could find no doctor I
had to do without. Ethel, a registered nurse, had a readiness to
share in helping the movement, though she did not belong to it in
the same sense as I. Then, as long as I had to violate the law any-
how, I concluded I might as well violate it on a grand scale by in-
cluding poverty as a reason for giving contraceptive information. I
did not see why the hardships and worries of a working man's wife
might not be just as detrimental as any disease. I wanted a legal
opinion on this if possible.

My next problems were where the money was to come from and
where the clinic was to be. Ever since I had announced that I was
going to open one within a few months I had been buried under an
avalanche of queries as to the place, which for a time I could not
answer. The selection of a suitable locality was of the greatest im-
portance. I tramped through the streets of the Bronx, Brooklyn,
the lower sides of Manhattan, East and West. I scrutinized the
Board of Health vital statistics of all the boroughs — births and in-
fant and maternal mortality in relation to low wages, and also the
number of philanthropic institutions in the vicinity.

The two questions — where and how — were settled on one and the
same day.

That afternoon five women from the Brownsville Section of
Brooklyn crowded into my room seeking the "secret" of birth con-
trol. Each had four children or more, who had been left with neigh-
bors. One had just recovered from an abortion which had nearly
killed her. "Another will take me off. Then what will become of my
family?"

214 MARGARET SANGER

They rocked back and forth as they related their afflictions, told
so simply, each scarcely able to let her friend finish before she took
up the narration of her own sufferings — the high cost of food, her
husband's meager income when he worked at all, her helplessness in
the struggle to make ends meet, whining, sickly children, the con-
stant worry of another baby — and always hanging over her night
and day, year after year, was fear.

All cried what a blessing and godsend a clinic would be in their
neighborhood.

They talked an hour and when they had finished, it seemed as
though I myself had been through their tragedies. I was reminded
of the story of a Spaniard who had become so desperate over the
injustice meted out to innocent prisoners that he had taken a re-
volver into the street and fired it at the first person he met; killing
was his only way of expressing indignation. I felt like doing the
same thing.

I decided then and there that the clinic should open at Browns-
ville, and I would look for a site the next day. How to finance it I
did not know, but that did not matter.

Then suddenly the telephone rang and I heard a feminine voice
saying she had just come from the West Coast bringing from Kate
Crane Gartz, whom I had met in Los Angeles, a check for fifty dollars
to do with as I wished. I knew what I should do with it ; pay the first
month's rent. I visualized two rooms on the ground floor, one for
waiting and one for consultation, and a place outside to leave the
baby carriages.

Fania Mindell had left Chicago to assist me in New York. It was
a terribly rainy day in early October that we plodded through the
dreary streets of Brownsville to find the most suitable spot at the
cheapest possible terms. We stopped in one of the milk stations to
inquire about vacant stores. "Don't come over here," was the reply.
Many social organizations were being established to meet the de-
mands of poverty and sickness, and we asked of them all, only to
receive the same response — "We don't want any trouble. Keep out
of this district." The mildest comment was, "It's a good idea, but
we can't help you." Although they agreed the mothers of the com-
munity should limit their families, they seemed terrified at the pros-*

FAITH I HAVE BEEN A TRUANT IN THE LAW 21 5

pect of a birth control clinic. It sounded also as if they were afraid
we would do away with" social problems and they would lose their
jobs.

Brownsville was not unique ; Brooklyn was and still is dotted with
such dismal villages, and even Queens with its pretensions to a
higher standard has its share. But Brownsville was particularly
dingy and squalid. Block after block, street after street, as far as
we could see in every direction stretched the same endless lines of
cramped, unpainted houses that crouched together as though for
warmth, bursting with excess of wretched humanity.

The inhabitants were mostly Jews and Italians, some who had
come to this country as children, some of the second generation. I
preferred a Jewish landlord, and Mr. Rabinowitz was the answer.
He was willing to let us have Number 46 Amboy Street at fifty
dollars a month, a reduction from the regular rent because he real-
ized what we were trying to do. Here in this Jewish community I
need have no misgivings over breaking of windows or hurling of
epithets, but I was scarcely prepared for the friendliness offered
from that day on.

I sent a letter to the District Attorney of Brooklyn, saying I ex-
pected to dispense contraceptive information from this address.
Without waiting for the reply, which never came, we began the
fun of fixing up our little clinic. We had to keep furnishing expenses
inside the budget, but Fania knew Yiddish and also how to bargain.
We bought chairs, desks, floor coverings, curtains, a stove. If I were
to leave no loophole in testing the law, we could only give the prin-
ciples of contraception, show a cervical pessary to the women, ex-
plain that if they had had two children they should have one size
and if more a larger one. This was not at all ideal, but I had no other
recourse at the time. However, we might be able to get a doctor any
day and, consequently, we added an examination table to our equip-
ment.

Mr. Rabinowitz spent hours adding touches here and there to
make the two shiny and spotless rooms even more snow-white.
"More hospital looking," he said.

Meanwhile we had printed about five thousand notices in English,
Italian, and Yiddish :

2l6 MARGARET SANGER

MOTHERS!

Can you afford to have a large family?

Do you want any more children?

If not, why do you have them?

DO NOT KILL, DO NOT TAKE LIFE, BUT PREVENT

Safe, Harmless Information can be obtained of trained Nurses at

46 AMBOY STREET

NEAR PITKIN AVE.— BROOKLYN.

Tell Your Friends and Neighbors. All Mothers Welcome

A registration fee of 10 cents entitles any mother to this information.

These we poked into letter boxes, house after house, day after
day, upstairs, downstairs, all over the place, viewing sadly the un-
kempt children who swarmed in the alleyways and over the fire es-
capes of the condemned tenements and played on the rubbish heaps
in the vacant lots. Seldom did we see a woman who was not carry-
ing or wheeling a baby. We stopped to talk to each and gave her a
supply of leaflets to hand on to her neighbors. When we passed by
a drugstore we arranged with the proprietor to prepare himself for
supplying the pessaries we were going to recommend.

The morning of October 16, 191 6 — crisp but sunny and bright
after days of rain — Ethel, Fania, and I opened the doors of the first
birth control clinic in America, the first anywhere in the world except
the Netherlands. I still believe this was an event of social significance.

Would the women come? Did they come? Nothing, not even the
ghost of Anthony Comstock, could have kept them away. We had
arrived early, but before we could get the place dusted and ourselves
ready for the official reception, Fania called, "Do come outside and
look." Halfway to the corner they were standing in line, at least one
hundred and fifty, some shawled, some hatless, their red hands
clasping the cold, chapped, smaller ones of their children.

Fania began taking names, addresses, object in coming to the
clinic, histories — married or single, any miscarriages or abortions,
how many children, where born, what ages. Remembering how the
Netherlands clinics in recording nothing had made it almost hope-
less to measure what they had accomplished from the human point
of view, I had resolved that our files should be as complete as it
was possible to make them. Fania had a copy of What Every Girl

FAITH I HAVE BEEN A TRUANT IN THE LAW 217

Should Know on her desk, and, if she had a free moment, read from
it. When asked, she told where it could be bought, and later kept
a few copies for the convenience of those who wanted them.

Children were left with her and mothers ushered in to Ethel or
me in the rear room, from seven to ten at once. To each group we
explained simply what contraception was; that abortion was the
wrong way — no matter how early it was performed it was taking
life; that contraception was the better way, the safer way — it took
a little time, a little trouble, but was well worth while in the long
run, because life had not yet begun.

Some women were alone, some "were in pairs, some with their
neighbors, some with their married daughters. Some did not dare
talk this over with their husbands, and some had been urged on by
them. At seven in the evening they were still coming, and men also,
occasionally bringing their timid, embarrassed wives, or once in a
while by themselves to say they would stay home to take care of
the children if their wives could come. A hundred women and forty
men passed through the doors, but we could not begin to finish
the line; the rest were told to return "tomorrow."

In the course of the next few days women appeared clutching
minute scraps of paper, seldom more than an inch wide, which had
crept into print. The Yiddish and Italian papers had picked up the
story from the handbills which bore the clinic address, and the hus-
bands had read them on their way from work and clipped them out
for their wives. Women who had seen the brief, inconspicuous news-
paper accounts came even from Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, New
Jersey, and the far end of Long Island.

Newly married couples with little but love, faith, and hope to
save them from charity, told of the tiny flats they had chosen, and
of their determination to make a go of it together if only the chil-
dren were not born too soon. A gaunt skeleton suddenly stood up
one morning and made an impassioned speech. "They offer us char-
ity when we have more babies than we can feed, and when we get
sick with more babies for trying not to have them they just give us
more charity talks!"

Women who were themselves already past childbearing age came
just to urge us to preserve others from the sorrows of ruined health,

2l8 MARGARET SANGER

overworked husbands, and broods of defective and wayward chil-
dren growing up in the streets, filling dispensaries and hospitals,
filing through the juvenile courts.

We made records of every applicant and, though the details might
vary, the stories were basically identical. All were confused, grop-
ing among the ignorant sex-teachings of the poor, fumbling without
guidance after truth, misled and bewildered in a tangled jungle of
popular superstitions and old wives' remedies. Unconsciously they
dramatized the terrible need of intelligent and scientific instruction
in these matters of life — and death.

As was inevitable many were kept away by the report that the
police were to raid us for performing abortions. "Clinic" was a word
which to the uneducated usually signified such a place. We would not
have minded particularly being raided on this charge, because we
could easily disprove it. But these rumors also brought the most
pitiful of all, the reluctantly expectant mothers who hoped to find
some means of getting out of their dilemmas. Their desperate threats
of suicide haunted you at night.

One Jewish wife, after bringing eight children to birth, had had
two abortions and heaven knows how many miscarriages. Worn
out, beaten down, not only by toiling in her own kitchen, but by
taking in extra work from a sweatshop making hats, she was now
at the end of her strength, nervous beyond words, and in a state of
morbid excitement. "If you don't help me, I'm going to chop up a
glass and swallow it tonight.''

A woman wrought to the pitch of killing herself was sick —
a community responsibility. She, most of all, required concentrated at-
tention and devotion, and I could not let any such go out of the clinic
until her mood had been altered. Building up hope for the future
seemed the best deterrent. "Your husband and your children need
you. One more won't make so much difference." I had to make each
promise to go ahead and have this baby and myself promise in re-
turn, "You won't ever have to again. We're going to take care of you."

Day after day the waiting room was crowded with members of
every race and creed; Jews and Christians, Protestants and Roman
Catholics alike made their confessions to us, whatever they may
have professed at home or in church. I asked one bright little Catho-

FAITH I HAVE BEEN A TRUANT IN THE LAW 219

lie what excuse she could make to the priest when he learned she
had been to the clinic. She answered indignantly, "It's none of his
business. My husband has a weak heart and works only four days
a week. He gets twelve dollars, and we can barely live on it now.
We have enough children."

Her friend, sitting by, nodded approval. "When I was married,"
she broke in, "the priest told us to have lots of children and we
listened to him. I had fifteen. Six are living. I'm thirty-seven years
old now. Look at me ! I might be fifty !"

That evening I made a mental calculation of fifteen baptismal fees,
nine baby funerals, masses and candles for the repose of nine baby
souls, the physical agonies of the mother and the emotional torment
of both parents, and I asked myself, "Is this the price of Christianity ?"

But it was not altogether sad; we were often cheered by gayer
visitors. The grocer's wife on the corner and the widow with six
children who kept the lunch room up the street dropped in to wish
us luck, and the fat old German baker whose wife gave out hand-
bills to everybody passing the door sent regular donations of dough-
nuts. Whenever the pressure became so overwhelming that we could
not go out for a meal we were sure to hear Mrs. Rabinowitz call
downstairs, "If I bring some hot tea now, will you stop the people
coming?" Two jovial policemen paused at the doorway each morn-
ing to discuss the weather. Reporters looked in speculating on how
long we were going to last. The postman delivering his customary
fifty to a hundred letters had his little pleasantry, "Farewell, ladies ;
hope I find you here tomorrow."

Although the line outside was enough to arouse police attention,
nine days went by without interference. Then one afternoon when
I, still undiscouraged, was out interviewing a doctor, a woman, large
of builcl and hard of countenance, entered and said to Fania she was
the mother of two children and that she had no money to support
more. She did not appear overburdened or anxious and, because she
was so well fed as to body and prosperous as to clothes, did not
seem to belong to the community. She bought a copy of What Every
Girl Should Know and insisted on paying two dollars instead of the
usual ten-cent fee.

Fania, who had an intuition about such matters, called Ethel aside

220 MARGARET SANGER

and said warningly she was certain this must be a policewoman.
But Ethel, who was not of the cautious type, replied, "We have
nothing to hide. Bring her in anyhow." She talked with the woman
in private, gave her our literature and, when asked about our fu-
ture plans, related them frankly. The sceptical Fania pinned the
two-dollar bill on the wall and wrote underneath, "Received from

Mrs. of the Police Department, as her contribution." Hourly

after that we expected trouble. We had known it must occur sooner
or later, but would have preferred it to come about in a different
way.

The next day Ethel and Fania were both absent from the clinic.
The waiting room was filled almost to suffocation when the door
opened and the woman who had been described to me came in.

"Are you Mrs. Sanger?"

"Yes.'-'

"I'm a police officer. You're under arrest."

The doors were locked and this Mrs. Margaret Whitehurst and
other plain-clothes members of the vice squad — used to raiding
gambling dens and houses of assignation — began to demand names
and addresses of the women, seeing them with babies, broken, old,
worried, harrowed, yet treating them as though they were inmates
of a brothel. Always fearful in the presence of the police, some be-
gan to cry aloud and the children on their laps screamed too. For
a few moments it was like a panic, until I was able to assure them
that only I was under arrest ; nothing was going to happen to them,
and they could return home if they were quiet. After half an hour I
finally persuaded the policemen to let these frightened women go.

All of our four hundred and sixty- four case histories were con-
fiscated, and the table and demonstration supplies were carried off
through the patient line outside. The more timid had left, but many
had stayed. This was a region where a crowd could be collected by
no more urgent gesture than a tilt of the head skyward. Newspaper
men with their cameras had joined the throng and the street was
packed. Masses of people spilled out over the sidewalk on to the
pavement, milling excitedly.

The patrol wagon came rattling up to our door. I had a certain
respect for uniformed policemen — you knew what they were about

FAITH I HAVE BEEN A TRUANT IN THE LAW 221

— but none whatsoever for the vice squad. I was white hot with in-
dignation over their unspeakable attitude towards the clinic mothers
and stated I preferred to walk the mile to the court rather than sit
with them. Their feelings were quite hurt. "Why, we didn't do any-
thing to you, Mrs. Sanger," they protested. Nevertheless I marched
ahead, they following behind.

A reporter from the Brooklyn Eagle fell into step beside me and
before we had gone far suggested, "Now I'll fix it up with the
police that you make a getaway, and when we reach that corner you
run. I'll stop and talk to them while you skip around the block and
get to the station first." It was fantastic for anyone so to misconstrue
what I was doing as to imagine I would run around the block for a
publicity stunt.

,1 stayed overnight at the Raymond Street Jail, and I shall never
forget it. The mattresses were spotted and smelly, the blankets stiff
with dirt and grime. The stench nauseated me. It was not a comfort-
ing thought to go without bedclothing when it was so cold, but, hav-
ing in mind the diseased occupants who might have preceded me, I
could not bring myself to creep under the covers. Instead I lay
down on top and wrapped my coat around me. The only clean ob-
ject was my towel, and this I draped over my face and head. For
endless hours I struggled with roaches and horrible-looking bugs
that came crawling out of the walls and across the floor. When a rat
jumped up on the bed I cried out involuntarily and sent it scuttling
out.

My cell- was at the end of a center row, all opening front and
back upon two corridors. The prisoners gathered in one of the aisles
the next morning and I joined them. Most had been accused of minor
offenses such as shoplifting and petty thievery. Many had weather-
beaten faces, were a class by themselves, laughing and unconcerned.
But I heard no coarse language. Underneath the chatter I sensed a
deep and bitter resentment; some of them had been there for three or
four months without having been brought to trial. The more fortu-
nate had a little money to engage lawyers ; others had to wait for the
court to assign them legal defenders.

While I was talking to the girls, the matron bustled up with, "The
ladies are coming !" and shooed us into our cells. The Ladies, a com-

222 MARGARET SANGER

mittee from a society for prison reform, peered at us as though we
were animals in cages. A gentle voice cooed at me, "Did you come
in during the night?"

"Yes," I returned, overlooking the assumption that I was a street
walker.

"Can we do anything for you?"

The other inmates were sitting in their corners looking as inno-
cent and sweet as they could, but I startled her by saying, "Yes, you
can. Come in and clean up this place. It's filthy and verminous^"

The Committee departed hurriedly down the corridor. One more
alert member, however, came back to ask, "Is it really very dirty?"

Although I told her in some detail about the blankets, the odors, the
roaches, she obviously could not picture the situation. "I'm terribly
sorry, but we can't change it."

I was still exasperated over this reply when I was called to the
reception room to give an interview to reporters. In addition to an-
swering questions about the raid I said I had a message to the tax-
payers of Brooklyn; they were paying money to keep their prisons
run in an orderly fashion as in any civilized community and should
know it was being wasted, because the conditions at Raymond Street
were intolerable.

My bail was arranged by afternoon and when I emerged I saw
waiting in front the woman who was going to swallow the glass;
she had been there all that time.

I went straight back to the clinic, reopened it, and more mothers
came in. I had hoped a court decision might allow us to continue,
but now Mr. Rabinowitz came downstairs apologetically. He said
he was sorry, and he really was, but the police had made him sign
ejection papers, on the ground that I was "maintaining a public
nuisance."

In the Netherlands a clinic had been cited as a public benefac-
tion; in the United States it was classed as a public nuisance.

Two uniformed policemen came for me, and with them I was
willing to ride in the patrol wagon to the station. As we started I
heard a scream from a woman who had just come around the cor-
ner on her way to the clinic. She abandoned her baby carriage,
rushed through the crowd, and cried, "Come back! Come back and

FAITH I HAVE BEEN A TRUANT IN THE LAW 223

save me !" For a dozen yards she ran after the van before someone
caught her and led her to the sidewalk. But the last thing I heard
was this poor distracted mother, shrieking and calling, "Come back !
Come back !"

Chapter Eighteen

LEAN HUNGER AND GREEN THIRST

''All that we know who lie in gaol
Is that the wall is strong;

And that each day is like a year,
A year whose days are long."

OSCAR WILDE

LOOKING back upon this period fraught with emotional distress,
j I have no regrets. But, looking ahead, I am grateful that there
looms no necessity for repeating those passionate, dangerous, and
menacing days.

Out of the raid four separate cases resulted: Ethel was charged
with violating Section 1142 of the Penal Code, designed to prevent
dissemination of contraceptive information; Fania with having sold
an allegedly indecent book entitled What Every Girl Should Know;
I, first, with having conducted a clinic in violation of the same Sec-
tion 1 142, second, with violating Section 1530 by maintaining a
public nuisance.

I claimed that Section 1142 which forbade contraceptive informa-
tion to, for, and by anyone was unconstitutional, because no state
was permitted to interfere with a citizen's right to' life or liberty, and
such denial was certainly interference. Experience had shown it did
the case no good merely to defend such a stand in a lower court; it
must be carried to a higher tribunal, and only a lawyer versed in
whereases and whatsoevers and inasmuchases could accomplish this.
But I was still hopeful of finding one who was able to see that the
importance of birth control could not be properly emphasized if we
bowed too deeply before the slow and ponderous majesty of the law.

The attorney who offered himself, J. J. Goldstein, had a back-

224

LEAN HUNGER AND GREEN THIRST 225

ground which made him more sympathetic than other lawyers, even
the most liberal. He was one of those young Jewish men of promise
who had been guided through adolescence by Mary Simkhovitch,
founder of Greenwich House, and Lillian Wald, founder of the
Henry Street Settlement. The 'seeds of social service had been planted
in him ; his legal training only temporarily slowed down their growth.

J.J. had placed himself in a difficult position for a youthful Tam-
many Democrat, some day to be a magistrate; he might have been
forgiven more easily had he received a larger fee. Though he had to
be convinced that we declined to have anything to do with political
wire-pulling, he fought for us valiantly.

November 20th we pleaded not guilty and trial was set for Novem-
ber 27th. J.J. endeavored to have the three of us tried simultaneously,
but the Court of Special Sessions would have none of it. Then he
asked for a jury trial, which could be granted at the discretion of the
Supreme Court; application was denied. An appeal to the Appellate
Division was dismissed ; writs of habeas corpus were dismissed ; an-
other appeal to the Appellate Division was dismissed; adjournments
pending appeal were urged but not granted. Indeed I was being swiftly
educated in the technicalities of criminal law.

I felt like a victim who passed into the courtroom, was made to
bow before the judge, and did not know what it was all about. Every
gesture had its special significance, which must not be left out if ap-
peals were to be possible. We had to make many more appearances
than would otherwise have been necessary ; everything had to be cor-
rectly on the record.

Evening after evening J.J. rehearsed the arguments he was going
to present and directed me to respond to questioning. I did not
understand the technicalities and begged to be allowed to tell the
story in my own way, fearful lest the heartaches of the mothers be
lost in the labyrinthine maze of judicial verbiage. But he maintained
if the case were to be appealed to a higher court, it had to be con-
ducted according to certain formalities.

"Why should it have to be in legal language?" I demanded. "I'm
a simple citizen, born in a democratic country. A court should also
listen to my plea expressed in plain language for the common people.
I'm sure I can make them understand and arouse their compassion."

226 MARGARET SANGER

He reiterated that I could not address a court as though I were
trying to instil my views in an individual. "You can't talk to them
that way. You'll have to let me talk."

"But that's the way I talk and I'm the accused."

I fully expected that if I were permitted to set forth my human
version of the Brownsville tragedies, no appeal would be required.
But J.J. knew the courts and had no such hopes. He was still doubt-
ful of any success before the lower tribunal, and was still unable to
see my point, counting chiefly on technicalities to win the case.

J.J. had formally objected to having our trial set during the No-
vember session because Justice Mclnerney was due to preside that
month, and at previous trials he had expressed biased opinions. This
objection was overruled.

The strictly legal method having failed, I resorted to my own and
wrote Justice Mclnerney an open letter :

As an American pledged to the principles and spirit in which this
Republic was founded, as a judge obligated by oath to fair and im-
partial judgment, do you in your deepest conscience consider your-
self qualified to try my case ?

In those birth control cases at which you have presided, you have
shown to all thinking men and women an unfailing prejudice and
exposed a mind steeped in the bigotry and intolerance of the In-
quisition.

To come before you implies conviction.

Judge Mclnerney "made application to the District Attorney to be
taken off this case."

Trial was marked for January 4, 19 17, but the first case, that of
Ethel, was reached so late in the afternoon it had to be postponed.
Four days afterwards, in spite of our attempts to be tried together,
she appeared alone. She freely admitted she had described birth con-
trol methods but denied the District Attorney's accusation that our
ten-cent registration fee made it a "money making" affair. This and
other sensational charges, such as "the clinic was intended to do away
with the Jews" were often inserted in the records for reporters to
pick up, make good stories of them, and in consequence influence
newspaper readers against us. They were great stumbling blocks.

Our most important witness, Dr. Morris H. Kahn, physician in

LEAN HUNGER AND GREEN THIRST 227

Bloomingdale's Department Store who also maintained a private
clinic where he gave out birth control information, was ready to
testify, but his evidence was ruled out as "irrelevant, incompetent,
and immaterial." To be sure the charge against Ethel was as a lay
person ; nevertheless, it was extraordinary that we could get no hear-
ing for a doctor. J. J. was allowed only fifteen minutes to present his
argument on the unconstitutionality of Section 1142, and the presid-
ing Judge decided that the court was bound to hold it constitutional
on precedent, regardless of argument.

Ethel was found guilty.

In the two weeks before sentence was to be pronounced we debated
what she and I should do. Perhaps it could be stayed, which would
settle everything, but we each had to be prepared for either a short
term of imprisonment or a long one. In case of the former, submis-
sion was the wiser course, because the public would not consider it
of sufficient moment to bestir itself; in the latter event, a hunger
strike seemed indicated, but, again, only if sufficient attention could
be called to it.

The New York World had the most liberal policy of all the lead-
ing morning dailies, and therefore appeared to offer the best likeli-
hood of being favorably disposed. I approached one of its editors
and asked whether he would print our entire story if I were to give
him a scoop and guarantee accuracy. He agreed, and assigned us a
special reporter.

Ethel was sentenced January 22nd to thirty days in the Workhouse
on Blackwell's Island in the East River. In spite of our discussion
over this possibility, she was utterly shocked, and exclaimed, "I'm
going to go on that hunger strike."

After spending the night in the Tombs, she was returned the next
morning to the Federal District Court of Brooklyn on a writ of habeas
corpus as a means of suspending sentence pending appeal. Daylight
had brought no change in her determination to continue with the
hunger strike. "I haven't had anything to eat yet," she declared, and,
remembering the tale that one hunger striker had received nourish-
ment in her cups of water, she added, "and, if they send me back, I
shan't drink anything either."

Neither J.J. nor I considered such a short sentence worth break-

228 MARGARET SANGER

ing your life for. Furthermore, the cause did not mean to Ethel
what it did to me. "Think this over very carefully," I reminded her.
"A hunger strike is not necessary, and if you once start you'll have
to keep it up." She insisted that she was ready to die if need be;
she had made her will and arranged for the disposition of her two
children — the hunger strike was to go on- The writ was refused
and she was remanded to the Workhouse. On her way there she told
the women with whom she shared the patrol wagon the salient facts
of birth control.

When Commissioner of Correction Burdette G. Lewis was asked
to comment on Ethel's decision he scoffed. "Others have threatened
hunger strikes. It means nothing." At first no food at all was brought
her, but after the publicity began the authorities were in despair
to make her eat. This was a case they did not know how to handle ;
they were mentally unprepared for prisoners who were guilty of per-
forming a legal wrong in order to win a legal right.

Ethel had gone one hundred and three hours without eating when
Commissioner Lewis established a precedent in American prison an-
nals by ordering her forcibly fed, the first woman to be so treated
in this country. He stated optimistically to the press how simple the
process was, consisting of merely rolling her in a blanket so she
could not struggle, and then having milk, eggs, and a stimulant forced
into her stomach through a rubber tube. He stressed how healthy
she continued to be, how little opposition she offered, how foolish
the whole thing appeared to him anyhow; he was going to charge
her for the expense incurred in calling in an expert to feed her.

As soon as I heard my sister was "passive under the feeding" I
became desperately anxious about her; nothing but complete loss of
strength could have lessened her resistance.

After one interview Commissioner Lewis had barred all reporters
and given out a statement of his own. "I have not much patience
with Mrs. Byrne's efforts to get advertising for her cause, and I
won't help such a campaign along by issuing bulletins."

But bulletins were being issued, nevertheless — and printed.

From prearranged sources I was receiving messages and notes
each evening, and reports on Ethel's pulse and temperature. Thus
I learned her vision was becoming affected and her heart was begin-

LEAN HUNGER AND GREEN THIRST 229

ning to miss beats, due to lack of liquids. "Going without water was
pretty bad," she said herself. "At night the woman whose duty it was
to go up and down the corridors to give the prisoners a drink if they
wanted it stopped right by my cell and cried, 'Water! Water!' till
it seemed as if I could not stand it. And on the other side of me
was the sound of the river through the window."

Nobody was allowed to visit Ethel but J.J., who, as her lawyer,
could not well be refused. But reporters have their own mysterious
ways of getting what they want. The World man succeeded in reach-
ing her. It was not on the whole a successful interview, because she
did not know who he was, but it did have one important result —
it confirmed at first hand our statements as to the seriousness of her
condition.

In the midst of my anxiety over Ethel, my own trial opened
January 29th in the same bare, smoky, upstairs Brooklyn court in
which she had appeared. Justices John J. Freschi, Italian, Moses
Hermann, Jewish, and George J. O'Keefe, Irish, sat on the bench.
Judge Freschi, a rather young man, presided, and on him we pinned
our hopes. We did not expect anything of old Judge Herrmann ex-
cept that, because he was Jewish, he might be broad-minded. As to
Judge O'Keefe we had no illusions.

No less than thirty of the mothers of Brownsville had been sub-
poenaed by the prosecution, but about fifty arrived — some equipped
with fruit, bread, pacifiers, and extra diapers, others distressed at
having had to spend carfare, timid at the thought of being in court,
hungry because no kosher food could be obtained near by. Neverthe-
less, all smiled and nodded at me reassuringly.

Formerly, a few women of wealth but of liberal tendencies had
been actively concerned in the movement, but now some who were
prominent socially were coming to believe on principle that birth con-
trol should not be denied to the masses. The subject was in the process
of ceasing to be tagged as radical and revolutionary, and becoming
admittedly humanitarian.

In this room, side by side with the ones to be helped, sat new help-
ers. Among them was Mrs. Amos Pinchot, Chairman of the Women's
Committee of One Hundred, formed to lend support to the defense.
Her reddish hair betrayed a temper quick and easily aroused in the

23O MARGARET SANGER

cause of justice. Aristocratic of bearing, autocratic by position, she
was one to command and be obeyed, and was easily a leading per-
sonality in the philanthropic smart set of New York. Among her
valuable services was the bringing into the fold of the mothers and
aunts of the present active Junior Leaguers.

Mrs. Lewis L. Delafield's limousine stood in front of the doors at
almost every trial and it meant a great deal to the defendants to have
the wife of one of the most eminent members of the New York bar
in the courtroom. By her very demeanor and looks — white-haired, a
fragile countenance — you knew she could touch nothing that was
not fine, and that she had the spiritual courage to stand by her ideas
and ideals in both her public and private life. Always she opened
her home and her heart and her arms to those she loved.

Fania was called first. She was a girl with a pale and delicate face,
and was too worried to bear the strain. She should not be punished
for co-operating, and I told J.J. to notify the court that she was not
well, though I strictly forbade him to say anything about my health.
Her trial was brief, narrowing itself down to whether What Every
Girl Should Know was to be classed as indecent. A few days later
she was found guilty and sentenced to fifty dollars' fine, a decision
which was eventually reversed on appeal.

It surprised me that in my trial the prosecution should be carried
on so vehemently, because the prosecutor had little to prove. To me
there seemed to be no argument at all; the last thing in my mind
was to deny having given birth control advice. Certainly I had vio-
lated the letter of the law, but that was what I was opposing.

I grew more and more puzzled by the stilted language, the circum-
locutions, the respect for precedent. These legal battles, fought in a
curiously unreal world, intensified my defiance to the breaking point.
I longed for a discussion in the open on merit and in simple, honest
terms.

I thought I might have my wish when Judge Freschi, holding up
a cervical cap which the prosecuting attorney had put in evidence,
said, "Who can prove this is a violation ; the law states that contra-
ception is permitted for the prevention of disease. May it not be used
for medical reasons?"

LEAN HUNGER AND GREEN THIRST 23 1

This question raised my hopes high. At last the law might be inter-
preted according to the definition I so desired; ill health resulting
from pregnancy caused by lack of its use might be construed as dis-
ease.

Then one by one the Brownsville mothers were called to the stand
to answer the District Attorney. "Have you ever seen Mrs. Sanger
before?"

"Yess. Yess, I know Mrs. Sanger."

"Where did you see her ?"

"At the cleenic."

"Why did you go there?"

"To have her stop the babies."

The witness bowed sweet acknowledgment to me until she was
peremptorily commanded to address the court.

"Did you get this information ?"

"Yess. Yess, dank you, I got it. It wass gut, too."

"Enough." the District Attorney barked, and called another.

Time after time they gave answers that were like nails to seal my
doom, yet each thought she was assisting me.

J.J. saw how their testimony could be turned to our advantage.

He asked, "How many miscarriages have you had? How much
sickness in your family? How much does your husband earn? The
answers were seven, eight, nine dollars a week."

At last one woman more miserable and more poverty-stricken than
the rest was summoned. "How many children have you ?"

"Eight and three that didn't live."

"What does your husband earn?"

"Ten dollars a veek — ven he vorks."

Judge Freschi finally exclaimed, "I can't stand this any longer,"
and the court adjourned over the week-end.

J.J. was jubilant, because he said there was nothing for him to do ;
the court was arguing his case for him.

I myself was feeling a little conscience-smitten. A mass meeting
of sympathizers had been organized by the Committee of One Hun-
dred for that evening in Carnegie Hall, and I went straight there
from the courtroom. I had a speech ready in which I said we were

232 MARGARET SANGER

being persecuted, not prosecuted; that the judges were no better than
witch-burners. It was unfortunate, but copies had already been re-
leased to the press and the wording could not be changed.

Helen Todd, the Chairman, a grand person who had been trained
under Jane Addams, had given the mothers of Brownsville places
of honor on the platform to let everybody see what kind of women
we were fighting for. She asked for twenty volunteers to follow the
example of the English suffragettes who had gone on hunger strikes
en masse, but no women whose names registered socially in the public
mind were willing thus to join in protesting against the law; only
working girls came forward.

Three days later Jessie Ashley and I took the train for Albany
with Mrs. Pinchot, who was a close friend of Governor Charles S.
Whitman, to ask him to appoint a commission to investigate birth
control and make a report to the State Legislature. The Governor,
who was fair and intelligent, quite distinctly representing a class of
liberal politicians, received us cordially.

Ethel and her hunger strike had been front-page news for ten
days; in the subway, on street corners, everywhere people gathered,
she was being discussed. In Washington and Albany congressmen
and legislators were sending out for the latest details. Governor Whit-
man naturally asked about her, and we seized the opportunity to try
to impress on him the outrageousness of making her suffer for so
just a cause. He said directly her incarceration was a disgrace to the
State. He was entirely out of sympathy with the courts and judges,
and offered a pardon conditional upon her ceasing to disseminate
birth control information.

But I had not come to ask that favor.

"My sister wouldn't take a pardon," I replied, much to the distress
of Mrs. Pinchot. However, I accepted gratefully his letter to the
warden at Blackwell's Island authorizing me to see her.

The next morning I appeared again before the court. During the
three-day interim the effect of the mothers' testimony had evidently
been effaced from the judges' minds, and they were infuriated by my
Carnegie Hall denunciation. But far more detrimental to my hope
of a new interpretation was the prosecution's introduction of a Federal
agent who had once confiscated a copy of Family Limitation in which

LEAN HUNGER AND GREEN THIRST 233

was the picture of this same cervical cap; he read aloud my advice
to women to use it as a" means of preventing conception. Not even
the most friendly judge could get away from the fact that I had in-
tended a far broader definition than any permitted by the existing
law.

The prosecution argued further that the constitutionality of Sec-
tion 1 142 could not be challenged, because the exception for physicians
in Section 1 145 already guaranteed "liberty" to citizens. And, since
I was not a physician and consequently did not come under the ex-
ception, the court must, in any event, find me guilty. This they did.

The day had been so full that I was not able to avail myself of
Governor Whitman's permit to visit Ethel until evening, when Mr.
and Mrs. Pinchot took me in their car to the Workhouse. I remember
how cold it was ; the trip on the ferry seemed to go on forever. But
when we finally arrived, at the name of Pinchot, the friend of the
Governor, doors swung open ; officialdom turned polite and courteous
and salaamed us on our way.

The Pinchots remained below while I was sent up to Ethel's cell,
where she was lying on her iron cot, dressed in readiness for her
release. Her appearance shocked and horrified me. She had grown
thin and emaciated, her eyes were sunken and her tongue swollen,
high red spots stood out on her cheeks. She could not see me even
across the narrow cell, knowing me only by my voice. Hers was muffled
as she whispered me to come nearer, her mind confused. "Liberty,"
she kept repeating, "I want my liberty."

Her life was all that mattered to me now. I had to eat humble pie,
and said to the matron I was going to telegraph Governor Whitman
that she was too ill to accept the conditions of the pardon for her-
self, but I would promise on her behalf. I was told that he had already
signed the pardon, was on his way to New York, and to wait down-
stairs, please.

After about half an hour we were informed Mrs. Byrne was com-
ing down. I went along the hallway to meet her. She was being held
up by two attendants, the matron following with wraps. Her head
was rolling from side to side, and I could see from the pallor of her
face, especially from the pinched look of her nose and mouth, that
she was losing consciousness. I protested to the matron, but orders

234 MARGARET SANGER

had been given and were being obeyed ; Commissioner Lewis wanted
the newspaper pictures to show her coming out on her feet.

Running back to the room where the Pinchots were sitting, I ex-
claimed, "She's fainting!" Then Mrs. Einchot clapped her hands im-
periously and directed the attendants to lay Ethel down immediately
and bring a stretcher. A command from her worked like magic. She
wrapped her own fur coat around the pathetic figure and, as soon
as Ethel felt the softness and warmth, she knew she was safe. We
carried her over to my apartment to begin the protracted period of
recuperation. Only after a year's convalescence was she able to take
up a normal life again.

Being the real instigator, I had every reason to expect a longer term
than Ethel. Logically, her hunger strike had served its purpose ; that
form of strategy was closed. But personally I decided that, if I should
receive a year, I should do the same. On the other hand, if I were
given three months or less, I could study and make use of my time.
J.J. had heard on reliable authority that if I were to change my plea
to guilty, I could have a suspended sentence. To his mind freedom
alone meant victory, and he urged me to accept it if it were offered.

This, it developed, was the intention of the court when on Mon-
day I was called back for sentence. Having Ethel off the front page
had brought a sigh of relief of almost national scope. But all the
publicity had had its effect on public opinion, and doubtless influenced
the judges also to a certain extent. Since they could not agree to
change the interpretation of the law, they had been obliged to find
me guilty, but they did not really want to inflict punishment.

They were, however, extremely suspicious of our assertion that
we were going to carry the case higher. Jessie Ashley, Ida Rauh,
and Bolton Hall had all been let off with fines on the understanding
they proposed to appeal, and then they had not done so. Courts were
beginning to assume this was just a trick of birth control advocates,
not meant in good faith.

I sat listening to what seemed an interminable discussion between
J.J. and Judge Freschi over whether the appeal were going to be
prosecuted in a quick and orderly fashion, until I was nearly lulled
to sleep. Suddenly my attention was caught by hearing J.J. declare
that I would "promise not to violate the law."

LEAN HUNGER AND GREEN THIRST 235

My mind clicked. It was not in my program to bargain for free-
dom. J J., knowing fulhwell I would make no such promise, had
planted himself in front of me so the court could not see my bel-
ligerent face. He was trying to act as a buffer and, at the same time,
for fear of what I might say, to avoid having me summoned to the
stand. I tried to peer around him, but he shifted from side to side,
obscuring my view. I tugged on his coat like a badly brought up child,
but he took no notice. Finally one of the judges interposed, "Your
client wishes to speak to you, counselor." I could be ignored no longer,
and was called. "Margaret Sanger, stand up."

History is written in retrospect, but contemporary documents must
be consulted; therefore I have gone to the official records for the
facts. After all, one courtroom is much like another, and the attitude
of one justice not so dissimilar from that of another. I was combat-
ing a mass ideology, and the judges who were its spokesmen merged
into a single voice, all saying, "Be good and we'll let you off." This
is what I heard:

You have been in court during the time that your counsel made
the statement that pending the prosecution of appeal neither you nor
those affiliated with you in this so called movement will violate the
law ; that is the promise your counsel makes for you. Now, the Court
is considering extreme clemency in your case. Possibly you know
what extreme clemency means. Now, do you personally make that
promise ?

The Defendant : Pending the appeal.

The Court : If Mrs. Sanger will state publicly and openly that she
will be a law-abiding citizen without any qualifications whatsoever,
this Court is prepared to exercise the highest degree of leniency.
The Defendant : I'd like to have it understood by the gentlemen of
the Court that the offer of leniency is very kind and I appreciate it
very much. It is with me not a question of personal imprisonment or
personal disadvantage. I am today and always have been more con-
cerned with changing the law regardless of what I have to undergo
to have it done.

The Court : Then I take it that you are indifferent about this matter
entirely.

The Defendant: No, I am not indifferent. I am indifferent as to
the personal consequences to myself, but I am not indifferent to the
cause and the influence which can be attained for the cause.
The Court : Since you are of that mind, am I to infer that you in-

236 MARGARET SANGER

tend to go on in this matter, violating the law, irrespective of the
consequences ?

The Defendant : I haven't said that. I said I am perfectly willing
not to violate Section 11 42 — pending the appeal.
Justice Herrmann : The appeal has nothing to do with it. Either
you do or you don't.

The Court : (to Mr. Goldstein) What is the use of beating around
the bush ? You have communicated to me in my chambers the physical
condition of your client, and you told me that this woman would
respect the law. This law was not made by us. We are simply here
to judge the case. We harbor no feeling against Mrs. Sanger. We
have nothing to do with her beliefs, except in so far as she carries
those beliefs into practice and violates the law. But in view of your
statement that you intend to prosecute this appeal and make a test
case out of this and in view of the fact that we are to regard her as
a first offender, surely we want to temper justice with mercy and that's
all we are trying to do. And we ask her, openly and above board, "Will
you publicly declare that you will respect the law and not violate it?"
and then we get an answer with a qualification. Now, what can the
prisoner at the bar for sentence expect ? I don't know that a prisoner
under such circumstances is entitled to very much consideration after
all."

The Court : (to the Defendant) We don't want you to do impossible
things, Mrs. Sanger, only the reasonable thing and that is to comply
with this law as long as it remains the law. It is the law for you, it is
the law for me, it is the law for all of us until it is changed; and
you know what means and avenues are open to you to have it
changed, and they are lawful ways. You may prosecute these methods,
and no one can find fault with you. If you succeed in changing the law,
well and good. If you fail, then you have to bow in submission to the
majority rule.

The Defendant : It is just the chance, the opportunity to test it.
The Court : Very good. You have had your day in court ; you ad-
vocated a cause, you were brought to the bar, you wanted to be tried
here, you were judged, you didn't go on the stand and commit perjury
in any sense, you took the facts and accepted them as true, and you
are ready for judgment, even the worst. Now, we are prepared, how-
ever, under all the circumstances of this case, to be extremely lenient
with you if you will tell us that you will respect this law and not
violate it again.

The Defendant : I have given you my answer.
The Court: We don't want any qualifications. We are not con-
cerned with the appeal.
Mr, Goldstein : Just one other statement, your Honor, one final

LEAN HUNGER AND GREEN THIRST 237

statement on my part. Your Honor did well say that you didn't want
anything unreasonable. With all due deference to your Honor, to
ask a person what her frame of mind will be with so many exigencies
in future, that is, if the commission did nothing or the Legislature
did nothing —

The Court : All we are concerned about is this statute, and as long
as it remains the law will this woman promise here and now unquali-
fiedly to respect it and obey it? Now, it is yes or no. What is your
answer, Mrs. Sanger ? Is it yes or no ?
The Defendent : I can't respect the law as it stands today.
The Court : Margaret Sanger, there is evidence that you established
and maintained a birth control clinic where you kept for sale and ex-
hibition to various women articles which purported to be for the pre-
vention of conception, and that there you made a determined effort
to disseminate birth control information and advice. You have chal-
lenged the constitutionality of the law under consideration and the
jurisdiction of this Court. When this is done in an orderly way no
one can find fault. It is your right as a citizen. . . . Refusal to obey
the law becomes an open defiance of the rule of the majority. While
the law is in its present form, defiance provokes anything but reason-
able consideration. The judgment of the Court is that you be con-
fined to the Workhouse for the period of thirty days.

A single cry, "Shame !" was followed by a sharp rap of the gavel,
and silence fell.

Chapter Nineteen

THIS PRISON WHERE I LIVE

I SAT in the front row while the court routine continued. The
room buzzed with conversation. J.J. was busy with formalities;
reporters were leaning over to ask me questions. Through the near-by
doorway I saw several young men awaiting their sentences like actors
in the wings listening for their cues. One was propped against the
wall smoking a cigarette. At the sound of his name he raised his head,
signifying he had heard, and yet kept on smoking. When it was
called a second time an attendant shoved him forward roughly. I
could almost feel the hardening of his soul under this brutal attitude
and the physical handling. He gave still another puff ; then deliberately
dropped the stub, stepped on it, and sauntered leisurely forward to
receive his sentence.

I was led into an anteroom where other prisoners were being put
through the regular fingerprinting procedure. I refused; there was
a definite connection in my mind between admission of guilt and
fingerprinting ; both in their different ways placed me in the category
of criminals. My refractoriness was reported to the court. But the
judges, poor dears, had worn themselves out trying to avoid sending
me to jail and were exasperated and cross; one more rebellion was
too much for them. "Don't bother us with that. It's not our job. Take
her away."

We were then herded through the rear of the building into an
open yard where the van was standing. The careless youth who had

238

THIS PRISON WHERE I LIVE 239

answered the court's call with such unconcern was waving farewell
to friends who loitered Outside.
"How long, Alf ?" asked one.
"Five years," and he laughed as he said it.

Two more boys, their arms fraternally flung across one another's
shoulders, shouted, "Three !" and, "Four !" consecutively. Were they
normal? Could liberty be of so little account? The muscles in my
throat contracted as I pictured the maternal love once spent on their
infancy, and now the reckless disregard for freedom culminating in
this ride. Thirty days seemed to me the end of the world, but they
made light of marking time in life for years, calling this their "sleep-
ing time." They paid no attention to me; I was entirely out of their
realm.

The women huddled beside me were more serious. An hysterical
and tearful "one-monther" had been obliged to leave her small four-
year-old son sitting on the veranda watching for her return. She had
not even been allowed to go back to see him and arrange for his care
during her absence.

Some experiences, though unexpected, are nevertheless partially
anticipated in the subconscious. I had believed fully and firmly that
some miracle would occur to keep me from going to jail. There had
been no miracle. The doors banged shut, two blue uniforms stared
stolidly at each other, the automobile jerked forward.

The trip to Raymond Street was short. We were ushered into a
waiting room. A thin-lipped attendant of huge size callously pushed
one weeping girl through the door.

"Get ready there, you!" she tossed over her shoulder at me.
"For what?"

"For the doctor." I sat still. She repeated, "Do you hear me? Go
in and get your examination !"

I resented this attitude with every fiber of my being and replied,
"I'm not being examined."

"Ho, you're not? You're one of the fighting kind, are you? Well,
we'll soon fix you, young lady !"

She swung her heavy, massive frame out the door, leaving me
wondering, but quivering with excited determination. I was not sure
what would happen to me. Within five minutes, however, she came

24O MARGARET SANGER

back with an entirely different manner and tone. "Oh, you're Mrs.
Sanger. It's all right. Come this way, please."

The next morning I was given a cup of bitter, turbid, lukewarm
coffee, and then placed inside the van, which set off for the Work-
house. There all my possessions were taken from me. A long wait.
The men were sent somewhere and the women somewhere else, I did
not know where. I just sat. After what seemed hours my belongings
were returned and a woman in coat and hat told me to follow her.
I did. A man added himself to our party, and the three of us climbed
into another van. We were driven some distance down the Island,
then put into a boat and ferried over to New York. I had no idea
where we were going. I asked but could elicit no answer.

We took a street car and after various transfers I caught sight
of a Loose-Wiles biscuit sign. But it did not help me because I had
not seen it before; the section was unfamiliar to me. In early after-
noon we reached the Queens County Penitentiary, Long Island City.
Evidently the Workhouse authorities had had enough of the Higgins
family and wanted no more responsibility of this nature.

Warden Joseph McCann, who met me, was a jovial young Irish-
man who had risen from the police ranks. "Have you had any lunch?"
he asked. The cause of his solicitude emerged when he inquired anx-
iously whether I intended to go on a hunger strike. Remembering
my morning cup of coffee, I replied, "Not unless your food is too
bad." He introduced Mrs. Sullivan, the motherly matron.

I answered the usual interrogatory about where I was born, how
old I was, etc., etc. When the clerk came to "What religion?" I re-
plied, "Humanity." He had never heard of this form of belief, and
rephrased the question. "Well, what church do you go to?"

"None."

He looked at me in sharp surprise. All inmates of the penitentiary
went to church; ninety-eight percent in my corridor had been reared
as Catholics.

The prison clothing which I was handed was much like a nurse's
uniform and did not disturb me. But when I was recalled to the
warden's office to be fingerprinted, I said flatly I would not submit.
He sent me back, to my cell.

THIS PRISON WHERE I LIVE 24 1

The floor was arranged rather on the order of a hospital ward,
with little alcoves of ten or fifteen cells running off the gallery. Mine,
Number 210, was small but clean. I had a bed, toilet, and washstand.
There was no chair ; I sat on my bunk.

All the prisoners were at work except Josephine, a German Catholic
who had lost her husband and three children within a short period.
She was eager to tell me her story. A few days after they had died,
she had gone to their graves and covered those of the children with
blankets to keep them warm. Someone saw her, decided she was in-
sane, and had her committed to jail. It was a spring day when she
was let out on parole. She was pleased and happy. A hurdy-gurdy
was playing her favorite tune, Just As the Sun Went Down. She paid
the man a nickel to play it over, then another, and another, and an-
other. The policeman at the corner, hearing it, looked her over and
arrested her again. During her next ten days in prison she nursed a
grievance against this injustice and, as soon as she came out, had
several drinks, went after the policeman, scratched his face, and tore
his buttons off.

Thereafter, Josephine drank whenever she could, and each time
she drank she fought, and, since she had developed a complex against
policemen, she landed back in jail in short order ; she had been in some
seventy times.

I found Josephine a kind, big-hearted person, and, though erratic,
fairly intelligent. She had a terrible tongue and a terrible temper,
and undoubtedly had periods when she was of unsound mind. Most
people were frightened of her.

She was supposed to put curses on her enemies, and they came true.
Once a person who had treated her badly and been cursed in conse-
quence had promptly contracted pneumonia and died. At another time
the matron of a certain jail had kept her three weeks in a dark cell
on bread and water. After the fifth day, when bread was handed
into the hole, she said it tasted like cake it was so sweet. From the
two or three cups of water daily, she had to assuage her thirst, wash
her face, and clean her teeth. When she came out of this Stygian
place she could scarcely see, but she managed to distinguish the matron
sufficiently to put the curse of God upon her. The next night someone

242 MARGARET SANGER

forgot to close the door of the elevator shaft, and the matron walked
through the open gate, fell to the bottom, and was instantly killed.
Now, Josephine was let alone.

In spite of my depression I was intensely interested in Josephine ;
she begged me to help her, and I said I would try. The rest of that
afternoon was consumed in this tale of woe until at five o'clock I
began my initiation into the prison routine of hours and meals. The
dining room was rilled with long tables and wooden benches. No
one had a knife or fork — only a tablespoon, edge blunted so as to be
unserviceable as a weapon. Supper consisted of tea and molasses,
stewed dried peaches, and two slices of bread which tasted queer ; it
was said to have saltpeter in it. We were locked in an hour later ; lights
were out at nine. Bells began ringing at six the next morning, and
the cells were opened at seven. For breakfast we had oatmeal with
salt and milk, again two slices of the same bread, and coffee without
sugar. Dinner was more bread, a boiled potato with the skin half on,
and a sorry hunk of meat.

Because of my active tuberculosis the prison doctor soon put me
on what was called a diet. This meant I could have crackers and milk
and tea in my cell instead of going to the supper table. Due probably
to the influence of the Osborne innovations at Sing Sing the men
at the Queens Penitentiary were better treated than the women. Their
food was of higher quality and they could buy tobacco and even
newspapers. The sole reading matter available to women were two
Catholic weeklies and the Christian Science Monitor. Our only other
news came from the two visitors a month allowed. So fine a mesh
screen was placed in the reception room that inmates could with diffi-
culty distinguish, as through a veil, the features of those to whom
they were talking. This was a hardship not even imposed at Sing
Sing.

After morning cell-cleaning we took a fifteen-minute walk in the
yard with our hooded capes over our heads. During this cold tramp
the women scanned the ground avidly for butts of cigarettes tossed
away by the men. It was tragic to see human beings forced to such
a low level as to dig with their fingers in the frozen earth to retrieve
these mangled stubs. Each used to grab her little bit and hide it.

When the matron went to her lunch we were locked in our cor-

THIS PRISON WHERE I LIVE 243

ridors but not in our cells. Ordinarily she took a nap afterwards,
and the girls could usually count on her not being back until three
or perhaps four o'clock. This gave them an opportunity to dry their
shreds of tobacco under the radiator, then wrap them in toilet paper
ready for smoking. At night when we were all locked in they struck
the steel ribs from their corsets against the stone floor, and thus
ignited pieces of cotton to give them lights. I could see tiny glowing
points in the darkness as they puffed away greedily.

Somehow, with the ingenuity born of necessity, these women also
managed to have smuggled in to them occasional small news items.
The first day one of the girls approached me and in a stage whisper de-
manded, "Cross your heart and hope to die you won't tell."

I crossed' my heart and hoped to die.

She slipped into my hand a short clipping about my trial. Appar-
ently others had been keeping up with events, because a few minutes
later Lisa, a little colored girl, called out, "You'se eats, don't yer?"

A third asked me to explain to them what "sex hygiene" was all
about. Accordingly I sought permission of Mrs. Sullivan to be al-
lowed in their corridor during her dinner hour.

"What for?"

"The girls want me to tell them about sex hygiene."

"Ah, gwan wid ye," she laughed. "They know bad enough al-
ready."

Some of the most lovely-looking girls were drug addicts. It seemed
monstrous that the State could take such liberties with human lives
as to convict them as criminals and sentence them to as much as three
years for something which should have been considered disease.

Other women were pickpockets, embezzlers, prostitutes, keepers
of brothels, "Tiffany," or high-class thieves, accomplices of safe
blowers, and a few "transatlantic flyers," who assisted in big hauls
from Paris or London.

The class snobbishness among the offenders interested me beyond
words. No one cared how or where another had been reared, what
kind of family background or education she had; the nature of her
offense was the key to her social position. The one who picked pockets
was scorned by the girl who helped herself to pearl or diamond neck-
laces; the shoplifter did not "sell her body."

244 MARGARET SANGER

The prisoners sometimes slid their arms in mine as we paced
along in the yard. One took me to task. "I saw you walking with
Gracie. You mustn't associate with her."

"Why not?"

"Do you know what she's in here for? She's a petty thief. When-
ever she gets out she rides in street cars and steals money from the
pocketbooks of poor people going to pay their rent, or women com-
ing home with their husbands' wages."

"And what are you here 'for?"

"Oh, I steal from the rich; I take only from people who have
jewelry and bank accounts."

I never did the regular work of cleaning, not even my own cell.
Nor was I sent into the workshop to sew or to operate the machines
with the others. When I asked Mrs. Sullivan why, she replied jollily,
"Oh, you look better over there with a pen in your hand."

She had fixed up a table to serve as a desk, and there I sat the
entire day with my papers and books, planning ahead and reading
countless letters ; the tenor of all was much like this from Sarah Gold-
stein :

The women here in Brownsville need help very bad. Mrs. Sanger
has got put away in the penitentiary for being friends with us, but
she said we was to use her place while she was gone. If we can have
a meeting over here in the clinic, I will put a fire in the stove and ask
the women to come Saturday.

We women here want to find out what the President, the Mayor,
and the Judges and everybody is trying to do. First they put Mrs.
Sanger in jail for telling us women how not to have any more children,
and then they get busy for the starve of the ones we've got. First
they take the meat and the egg, then the potato, the onion, and the
milk, and now the lentils and the butter, and the children are living
on bread and tea off the tea leaves that is kept cooking on the back
of the stove.

Honest to God, we ought to call a meeting and do something
about it.

Part of my time also was devoted to helping some of the girls to
read or to write the two letters a month permitted them. I had not
believed that any American-born of sixteen to eighteen years of age
could be illiterate, but there were at least ten.

THIS PRISON WHERE I LIVE 245

I had been in the penitentiary for several days before I noticed a
tall, erect woman with white hair and a face which obviously did not
belong there ; I had never seen her in the yard or at table. Although
she had been over nine months sharing the other prisoners' food and
working beside them she had not become one of them. Because of
her aloofness I found it hard to make her acquaintance, but ultimately
"the Duchess," as she was called, told me her story.

After having been a teacher for fifteen years, she had married a
minister who lived on a pension. They stayed in hotels, always spend-
ing more than their income, while he steadily drew on his insurance
money. His sudden death left her practically penniless. Due to her
age and the fact she had not taught for so long her application for
a teacher's job was refused. She continued in the hotel until she had
used up everything and was forced to move. Thereafter, she went
from hotel to hotel, fleeing each time angry looks and bills; finally
she was arrested and given an indeterminate sentence of from one
to three years.

Her constant brooding over her past was not preparing her for
any future. I suggested she might keep her hand in by instructing
the illiterate girls, and asked J.J., my only visitor, to have his friend
William Spinney send some primers and lower grade text-books from
Henry Holt and Company where he worked; this was done free of
charge. The Duchess was contentedly happy from the day she began
teaching again.

In the desire to learn whether the girls' background might not be
related to the causes of their imprisonment, I asked Warden McCann
whether I could see the records, especially as to the size of the families
from which they came. He said it was against the rules, but he was
willing to give me such facts separately, assuring me I was going
to be surprised and disappointed. I was.

When I inquired, "How many brothers and sisters does Rosie
have?" the answer was, "None."

"And Marie?"

"She had a brother, but he's dead."

It appeared from the entries that all these women had been single
children or, if a brother or sister had been born, he or she no longer
survived. This was difficult to believe, but I had to accept it at first.

246 MARGARET SANGER

However, when I became better acquainted with the old-timers
they told me quite a different history. The registers were merely evi-
dence of the unwritten rule among them to keep their families out
of it.

The madam of a house of assignation was putting her daughter
of seventeen through a fashionable boarding school. To prevent the
child from knowing anything about her occupation she wrote letters,
sent them West, where she was supposed to be traveling, and had them
redirected to the school. Many other prisoners were mothers also,
and the scheming and planning to hide the painful knowledge of their
whereabouts was worthy of the deepest admiration.

One after another admitted she had given false statements to save
her relatives from disgrace or constant annoyance by the police. The
result of a poll of the thirty-one in our corridor showed an average
of seven children to each girl's family.

I was always interested to know why the pretty ones were there.
Frances, one of the loveliest, had a radiant color, rosebud mouth,
and the most innocent eyes; she even managed to wear her apron
with a Gallic chic. It did not seem possible she could have committed
a crime, but she turned out to be one of the rogues who made a prac-
tice of frequenting gatherings where careless people offered opportu-
nities to pickpockets. She told me how she, with two other girls, had
once gone to an up-State fair. After making a grand haul of watches
and purses and anything they could lay their hands upon, her two com-
panions said, "We've got enough. We're clearing out."

But Frances had spotted an easy-looking wallet. It was not quite
easy enough. Unfortunately for her the owner shouted, "Somebody's
stolen my money!"

A bystander pointed, "She did it. I've been in three places today
where things have been lost, and she's been there every time."

Other people gathered round. Frances began to cry. Because the
friends of the man who had been robbed and he himself insisted she
must be arrested the police were called.

Frances continued to weep until several lusty young farmers were
ready to defy her accusers. How could they say such things about
such a sweet girl! It looked as though a fight were imminent, and

THIS PRISON WHERE I LIVE 247

she hoped to slip away during the excitement. But the police arrived
too soon and took her to the station. They found nothing on her;
somehow she had rid herself of the wallet.

Frances' new-found allies were ready to go her bail, but it so hap-
pened that a police chief from a neighboring town who had come
to the fair for the express purpose of identifying possible petty crimi-
nals recognized her from his sheaf of photographs of habitual offend-
ers. He said to her supporters, "Boys, you're crazy. This girl's as
crooked as a snake. Here's her picture !"

"Why, you're crazy yourself ! Your girl's a blonde, and this one's
dark."

The chief snatched at Frances' hair, and off came her wig. As she
told me this great joke on herself she shook with merriment.

But this was not the end of the story. The station captain had been
influenced by her attractiveness and, since the wallet had not actually
been discovered on her, wanted to let her off. He made a compromise.
"I'm going to give you a ticket to Montreal. You either go to jail
or take it and get out."

She accepted the ticket, but left the train at a near-by point and
rejoined her friends at another fair. There, wearing a different cos-
tume, she continued her trade. Although to look at her ingenuous
face I could hardly believe it, pitting her wits against the police was
to her a type of game.

Gertrude had been equally clever. She was of German origin, very
stylish, moving in good circles when not in prison. She had learned
that the officers of the submarine, Deutschland, which had just
crossed the ocean, were to be entertained at a party. Having secured
an invitation, she devoted herself to a lieutenant who, she had dis-
covered, was carrying seven hundred dollars in his pocket. When
the gathering broke up she took him back to his hotel in her car,
suggesting they stop at a night club en route. There she put a drug
in his glass. It took a bit of time to work, but after they had started
on again he fell asleep. She gave five dollars to the doorman to take
him to his room, saying he had drunk a bit too much, and then went
home.

At seven the following morning, while Gertrude and her little girl

248 MARGARET SANGER

were still in bed, the police raided her apartment. They could unearth
nothing except what she could honestly account for. Her effects were
turned upside down, and still no money was to be found.

"Then how could they send you to jail?" I queried. "You didn't
take it, did you ?"

"Of course I did," she asserted, looking at me as if I were dull-
witted. "They couldn't pin it on me, that's all."

Even though Gertrude had been brighter than the police, she, like
many of the others, had been convicted on her past record and the
present suspicious circumstances.

Josephine was another case in point. After I myself had been re-
leased I had her paroled under her own recognizance and secured a
place for her as chambermaid in a hotel. Fate so arranged that in
the very first room she entered on her first morning's work she was
confronted with the corpse of a man who had died in his bed during
the night. She rushed out immediately, got drunk, and went directly
back to jail again.

The resentment thus engendered in these caged women was like
a strong, glowing flame, of a depth that I scarcely had believed pos-
sible. The shivers ran up and down my back when I heard the details
of their unguided and loveless childhoods, which explained in large
part the curious manner in which their minds worked. They thought
only in terms of getting away with their crimes, of beating the system
— although their presence here was proof that it could not be beaten.
Three of the younger girls, too old for Bedford Reformatory but
almost too young for the penitentiary, definitely shocked me with
their plans for wrong-doing without being apprehended. They asked
me about my case. "Was it true the judge gave you a chance not to
go to jail if you'd promise not to break the law?"

"Yes."

"Well, why didn't you do it?"

"I couldn't promise that."

"But you didn't have to keep your promise!"

The ever-present bitterness arose, not from being caught in the
act, but from being convicted without having been, according to their
own belief, proved guilty. It was the woeful mental attitude rather
than the actual physical condition of their imprisonment which so

THIS PRISON WHERE I LIVE 249

appalled me. Not one of them intended to go straight. They hated the
police who were drawing good salaries from the State and getting
credit for putting them in jail ; yet all the time they had been smarter.
This sounds inconsistent, but it was their peculiar psychological twist.

I talked it over later with several judges to whom it was rather
a new point of view. Among other cases I cited that of a brothel
keeper who conducted her house as a club and did it so carefully that
no evidence could be obtained against her. Therefore, a detective had
put opium in the plumbing and she had been sentenced on a narcotic
charge, although it was well known this was not her offense.

"The prisoners were guilty, weren't they?" said one of the judges.
"You know that, don't you?"

"Yes," I rejoined, "but to my mind that doesn't end the State's
responsibility. It seems to me your detectives should be more intel-
ligent than the criminals they are set to catch."

The girls at Queens Penitentiary were unaware they were entitled
to bring a far more serious charge against society than clumsy and
inept police methods. I have never since visited an institution for
juvenile offenders without thinking how stupid people are not to
recognize that most adolescents are subjected to temptation on some
occasion or other; that anyone, in an emotional fragment of time,
when young and when the consequences are not clear, may do some
forbidden thing. More often than not it is merely incidental, and in
no way warrants a life of penance.

The only brutal treatment I received was during the last two hours.
Since my fingerprints had not been taken on arrival, Warden McCann
first tried to talk me into compliance. His argument that all prisoners'
prints must be on file, that not having them was unheard of, got us
nowhere. I refused to submit, even though it postponed my release.
He then turned me over to two keepers. One held me, the other strug-
gled with my arms, trying to force my fingers down on the inkpad. I
do not know from what source I drew my physical strength, but I
managed to prevent my hands from touching it. My arms were bruised
and I was weak and exhausted when an officer at headquarters, where
J. J. was protesting against the delay, telephoned an order to discharge
me without the usual ceremony.

March 6, 191 7, dawned a bitter, stinging morning. Through the

25O MARGARET SANGER

metal doors I stepped, and the tingling air beat against my face. No
other experience in my life has been like that. Gathered in front were
my old friends who had frozen through the two hours waiting to
celebrate "Margaret's coming out party." They lifted their voices in
the Marseillaise. Behind them at the upper windows were my new
friends, the women with whom I had spent the month, and they too
were singing. Something choked me. Something still chokes me when-
ever I hear that triumphant music and ringing words, "Ye sons of
freedom wake to glory !"

I plunged down the stairs and into the car which stood ready for
me, and we swept out of the yard towards my apartment. At the en-
trance were Vito, the coal man, and his wife, beaming and proudly
pointing to the blazing fire they had made on the hearth to welcome
me home.

Chapter Twenty

A STOUT HEART TO A STEEP HILL

"When a thing ceases to be a subject of controversy, it ceases
to be a subject of interest."

WILLIAM HAZLITT

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THE noisy clamor of the world could not reach me through thick
stone walls ; prison had been a quiet interim for reflection, for
assembling past experiences and preparing for the future. The tem-
pestuous season of agitation — courts and jails and shrieking and
thumbing-the-nose — should now end. Heretofore there had been much
notoriety and but little understanding. The next three steps were to
be: first, education; then, organization; and, finally, legislation. All
were clearly differentiated, though they necessarily overlapped to a
certain extent.

I based my program on the existence in the country of a forceful
sentiment which, if co-ordinated, could become powerful enough to
change laws. Horses wildly careering around a pasture have as much
-strength as when harnessed to a plow, but only in the latter case can
the strength be measured and turned to some useful purpose. The pub-
lic had to be educated before it could be organized and before the laws
could be changed as a result of that organization. I set myself to the
task. It was to be a long one, because the press did not want articles
stating the facts of birth control ; they wanted news,, and to them news
still consisted of fights, police, arrests, controversy.

One of the early essays in education was a moving picture drama-
tizing the grim and woeful life of the East Side. Both Blossom and I
believed it would have value, and I continue to be of the same mind.
He had not approved of the clinic and had declined to have anything
to do with it, but was eager to join me in capitalizing on the ensuing

251

252 MARGARET SANGER

publicity. Together we wrote a scenario of sorts, concluding with the
trial. Although I had long since lost faith in my abilities as an actress,
I played the part of the nurse, and an associate of Blossom's financed
its production. But before it could appear Commissioner of Licenses
George H. Bell ordered it suppressed.

To prove the film mirrored conditions which called for birth con-
trol, we gave a private showing at a theater, inviting some two hundred
people concerned with social welfare. All agreed the public should see
it, and signed a letter to that effect. Justice Nathan Bijur issued an
injunction against interfering with its presentation. The moving pic-
ture theaters, however, fearful lest the breath of censure wither their
profits, were too timid to take advantage of this.

Of infinitely greater and more lasting significance than this venture
was the Birth Control Review, which, from 191 7 to 1921, was the
spearhead in the educational stage. It could introduce a quieter and
more scientific tone, and also enable me to keep in touch with people
everywhere whose interest had already been evoked. Emotion was not
enough; ideas were not enough; facts were what we needed so that
leaders of opinion who were articulate and willing to speak out might
have authoritative data to back them up.

The first issue of the Review, prepared beforehand, had come out
in February, 191 7, while I was in the penitentiary. It was not a very
good magazine then ; it had few contributors and no editorial policy.
Anyone — sculptor, spiritualist, cartoonist, poet, free lances — could ex-
press himself here ; the pages were open to all. In some ways it was
reminiscent of the old days of the Woman Rebel, when everybody
used to lend a hand — always with this vital difference, that we held
strictly to education instead of agitation. I had learned a little editorial
knowledge from my previous magazine efforts and now obtained a
more professional touch from the newspaper men and women who
gradually came in, among them William E. Williams, formerly of the
Kansas City Star, Walter A. Roberts, who later published the few
issues of the American Parade, and Rob Parker, editor and make-up
man. Among the associates were Jessie Ashley, Mary Knoblauch, and
Agnes Smedley.

That extraordinarily shy and mysterious woman, Agnes Smedley,
had been born in a covered wagon of squatter parents, and, though she

A STOUT HEART TO A STEEP HILL 253

had become a teacher in the California public schools, her early habits
of thought remained with her ; she was consistently for the under dog.
The British Government had suspected her of connection with the
seditious activities of a group of Hindu students and persuaded the
Federal authorities to investigate. All they had been able to find on
which to charge her were a few copies of Family Limitation. This
brought her within our province, and when she was arraigned in New
York John Haynes Holmes procured her ten-thousand-dollar bail.
After her acquittal she worked with us at various times until she left
for post-War Germany.

On this and other occasions John Haynes Holmes, a speaker second
to none, brought the convincing force of his arguments and mind to
our aid. By the shape of his head and the honesty of his eyes you could
recognize the practical idealist in this Unitarian minister. He never
straddled issues. During the War he said if one flag were to be hung
out his church windows, then those of all nations should be flown;
no peoples were enemies of his.

Two numbers of the Review had appeared when the United States
entered the War and Blossom and I fell out. He was an ardent Franco-
phile and, like most masculine members of the intelligentsia, threw in
his lot with the Allies. I wrote a pacifist editorial ; he refused to run
it and resigned.

To Blossom, as to so many others, pacifism was automatically la-
beled pro-Germanism, on the old theory that "he who is not for me
is against me." I had already seen in Europe what propaganda could
do to build up a war spirit, and prayed every morning when I awoke
that I could keep my head clear and cool. I had heard the plaintive
pleas of French mothers, but had talked also with German mothers.
In the hearts of none had there been hatred or desire for their sons
to kill other sons.

I knew what I thought about the War ; it was so outrageous I would
not be mixed up in it. I still believe it was not only a dreadful thing
in itself — a slaughter and waste of human life — but, even more dis-
astrous, it exterminated those who ought now to be ruling our na-
tional destinies according to the pre- War liberality of thought in which
they had been reared. We started at that time to walk backwards in-
stead of forwards, and have retreated steadily ever since. A fear of

254 MARGARET SANGER

expressing opinions which then began to seep in has gradually helped
to impose censorship and further intolerance.

I was neither pro-Ally nor pro-German but, using common sense,
was distressed at seeing German achievements torn into shreds. In-
telligence in Germany had been focused on all fronts; she had the
lowest illiteracy of any country and had invested heavily in mass edu-
cation from which the rest of the world was benefiting at little cost.
She had offered the best training for graduate students in medicine ;
foreign travel had been accelerated by German linguists; commerce
had been able to carry on international contacts through German inter-
preters ; any foreign industry which had needed technical advice had
usually employed a German scientist, engineer, or chemist who knew
how to do his job and do it well. Germany could not continue this
policy without wanting to receive some tangible return.

I was convinced the primary cause of this war lay in the terrific
pressure of population in Germany. To be sure, her birth rate had
recently begun to decline, but her death rate, particularly infant mor-
tality, had, through applied medical science, likewise been brought
far down. The German Government had to do something about the
increase of her people. Underneath her rampant militarism, under-
neath her demand for colonies was this drivings economic force. She
could hold no more, and had to burst her bounds.

Blossom's defection was one of the heart-breaking things that can
creep into any endeavor, even the most idealistic. I have seen so many
young crusaders come galloping to show me the way, joining the
procession and blowing horns for "The Cause," panting with en-
thusiasm to reform the world, willing to teach me how to put the
movement on a "social" or "sound practical and economic" basis.
They were going to get vast contributions so that money would roll
unceasingly into our coffers. But if they lacked the necessary patience
and forbearance, or were there for personal aggrandizement, they
became discouraged at the first show of thorny, disagreeable ob-
stacles, retreating or deserting rather than fighting through.

In the birth control movement supporters have come and gone.
When they remained they found work, work, work, and little recog-
nition, reward, or gratitude. Those who desired honor or recompense,

A STOUT HEART TO A STEEP HILL 255

or who measured their interest by this yardstick, are no longer here.
It is no place for anything except the boundless love of giving. Blos-
som was the first illustration to me that the ones to whom authority
is handed over are likely to expand and explode unless they have self-
lessly dedicated themselves.

.Now, I believe the three chief tests to character are sudden power, .j
sudden wealtlj, and sudden publicity. Few can stand the latter ; nothing
goes to the head with more violence. Seeing this all around me, I did
not subscribe to a clipping bureau until it seemed necessary for his-
torical purposes. I did not even read the papers when unsought ad-
vertisement was great, remembering that this could be but a nine
days' wonder. Furthermore, news items were often distracting be-
cause the facts were constantly embroidered just to make a good story,
to paint a situation according to the policy of the paper, or because
they reflected the inhibitions of the reporters. Hours could have been
entirely given over to denials and contradictions.

In the midst of any emergency such as a police raid or the stopping
of a meeting my own emotions generally kept an even tenor ; they did
not go hopping up and down like a temperature. A nurse cannot afford
to lose her head, and the control I had won in that training helped
me, as did also my father's philosophy, "Since all things change, this
too will pass."

Consequently, during this feverish period, neither public praise nor
public blame affected me very much, although the type of criticism
that came from friends was different. Just because they were friends
and I wanted them to understand, I was unhappy if they did not. But,
since persons one likes can have great influence and friendships take
time, I refrained from making many new ones. Nevertheless, those
I had then are as good today; when we meet we pick up the threads
where we dropped them.

The War halted the progress of the birth control movement tem-
porarily. The groups that had before been active now found new in-
terests. The radicals were convulsed and their own ranks torn in two
by the opposition to conscription. Influenza swept over the world and
in its passage took off many of our old companions. Governor Whit-
man's promised commission blew up. One bright bugle sounded when

256 MARGARET SANGER

I learned that the section on venereal disease in What Every Girl
Should Know, which had once been banned in the New York Call and
for which Fania had been fined, was now, officially but without credit,
reprinted and distributed among the soldiers going into cantonments
and abroad. At home all felt there was little to do but wait until people
came back to their senses ; the Review was the only forward step I
could take at the time.

Late in 191 7 a new recruit was enlisted. Nobody ever knew Kitty
Marion's true name. She had been born in Westphalia, Germany, and
when she was fifteen her father had whipped her once too often and
she had run away to England, where eventually she had headed a turn
at a music hall.

The London slums had aroused Kitty's social conscience, and she
had abandoned her own career to enroll with Mrs. Pankhurst in the
suffrage crusade, becoming one of the most determined of her fol-
lowers. When put in jail she set fire to her cell, chewed a hole in her
mattress, broke the window, and upon being released threw bricks
at Newcastle Post Office. Seven times she went to prison, enduring
four hunger strikes and two hundred and thirty-two compulsory feed-
ings, biting the hand that forcibly fed her. Since it was distasteful to
the Government to have any suffragette die in prison, Kitty, under the
so-called Cat-and-Mouse Act, was once released to a nursing home
until she should have strength enough to return to confinement. Friends
visited her there, exchanged clothes with her, and she escaped. On an-
other occasion the Bishop of London personally begged her to give up
her struggle. At the outbreak of war, the Pankhurst forces hustled her
over to America rather than have her run the almost certain risk of
deportation or internment.

Selling The Suffragette on the streets of London had been part of
the initiation which duchesses and countesses and other noble aux-
iliaries to the Pankhurst cause had had to undergo. Kitty had stood
side by side with them. Since we had so experienced a veteran ready
for service we began to offer the Review on the sidewalks of New
York. Our more sober supporters objected because they considered it
undignified. But men and women from here, there, and everywhere
passed through the commercial centers of New York, and this was a
real means of reaching them.

A STOUT HEART TO A STEEP HILL 257

All of us took a hand, but Kitty was the only one who stood the test
of years. Strong, stoutish, tow-headed, her blue eyes bright and keen
in spite of being well on in her fifties, she became a familiar sight.
Morning, afternoon, and until midnight — workdays, Sundays, and
holidays — through storms of winter and summer, she tried every
street corner from Macy's to the Grand Central Terminal. But her
favorite stand was Seventh Avenue and Forty-second Street, right
at Times Square. In her own words she was enjoying "the most fas-
cinating, the most comic, the most tragic, living, breathing movie in
the world."

Many people still think I must be Kitty Marion. Everywhere they
say to me, "I saw you twenty years ago outside the Metropolitan
Opera House. You've changed so I wouldn't know you."

Street selling was torture for me, but I sometimes did it for self-
discipline and because only in this way could I have complete knowl-
edge of what I was asking others to do. In addition, I learned to realize
what possible irritations Kitty had to encounter. Notwithstanding the
insults of the ignorant, the censure of the bigots, she remained good-
humored. They said to her, "You ought to be ashamed of yourself,
you ought to be arrested, to be shot, to be in jail, to be hanged !" or,
"It's disgraceful, disgusting, scandalous, villainous, criminal, and un-
ladylike !" When someone asked, "Have you never heard God's word
to 'be fruitful and multiply and replenish the earth' ?" Kitty replied,
"They've done that already," and, knowing her Apocrypha as well as
her Bible, retorted in kind, "Does it not say in Ecclesiasticus : 16; I,
'Desire not a multitude of unprofitable children' ?"

During the War it was astonishing how many men, in and out of
uniform, mistook Birth Control for British Control. "We don't want
no British Control here !" they exclaimed. Kitty would correct them,
"Birth Control," and someone would call, "Oh, that's worse!"

Who bought the Review? This question was invariably asked, and
the answer was — radicals, the curious, girls about to be married,
mothers, fathers, social workers, ministers, physicians, reformers, rev-
olutionaries, foreigners. A psychological analysis of reactions of
passers-by when they saw the words "birth control" would have been
interesting. I never could credit the power those simple words had of
upsetting so many people. Their own complexes as to what sex meant

*\

258 MARGARET SANGER

to them appeared to govern them. Many were disappointed at its staid-
ness ; some were highly indignant, others highly amused, regarding it
as a joke ; some bought with the set faces of soldiers going over the top ;
some looked and looked and then strolled on. Others walked by only to
return with the money ready, hastily stuff the magazine in their pock-
ets, and move away, trying to seem unconcerned. The majority bought
with the utmost seriousness in the hope that it might solve their per-
sonal problems.

"Jail" was the instant reaction of every new policeman on the beat.
Kitty, who knew she needed no license, would contest the point with
him while a crowd gathered. But few of her arresters were familiar
with the law in the name of which they hauled her off to the station.
Time and again my night's slumbers were broken to go and bail her
out. J.J. was always able to have the case dismissed, but only after it
had been argued and proved in our favor.

Once Charles Bamberger, the agent provocateur of the Society for
the Suppression of Vice who had brought about Bill Sanger's arrest,
worked much the same ruse on Kitty. His society was supposedly de-
signed to promote purity, which was to its members synonymous with
good. But in order to do this they induced people to break the law by
appealing to their deepest human sympathies, a form of trickery not
to be condoned by any moral code.

Bamberger, on repeated visits to Kitty at our office, poignantly de-
scribed the condition of his unfortunate wife whose health depended
absolutely on her getting contraceptive information. Anna's sense,
like Fania Mindell's, was unfailing in recognizing such decoys; I
never went against it. But in vain did she warn Kitty, who gave him
the information. He had her arrested, and she was not allowed to tell
in court the means by which he had obtained his evidence ; she had to
serve a term. Kitty's sentence did not have adequate publicity, but
so violent was the war temper, that, in view of her German birth, even
well-disposed newspapers practically ignored it.

In addition to selling the Review we tried another experiment in
street propaganda. During the warm evenings of one summer Kitty,
Helen Todd, and I, often accompanied by George Swazey, a friendly
Englishman, proceeded to the neighborhood of St. Nicholas Avenue

A STOUT HEART TO A STEEP HILL 259

above 125th Street, where many white collar families lived. We used
to buy a soapbox at the nearest delicatessen and Helen, who had a
lank, swarthy picturesqueness which attracted attention, mounted it ;
Swazey, standing behind, held aloft an American flag. Though not a
soul might be in sight except our little group with its bundles of litera-
ture and Kitty with her Reviews, Helen began in her beautiful voice,
"Ladies and Gentlemen," bowing to the trees, "we welcome you here
tonight." When nobody appeared she began again. "Ladies and Gentle-
men," and this time one or two strollers usually lingered. Imme-
diately we raised our pasteboard banners with "birth control" printed
in black letters. She was off in full swing, and in a few minutes we had
our audience.

In the course of our various trials people had sent checks and made
donations to the special Defense Fund account, and we sent anybody
who gave money, no matter how much or how little, a mimeographed
report of all contributors. We had also accepted almost two thousand
paid-in-advance subscriptions, and had therefore incurred an obliga-
tion to continue the Review for twelve months.

One May morning when I put my key in the office door and swung
it open, Anna Lifshiz and I stood and gazed at each other. Only the
telephone perched forlornly on top of a packing box relieved the bare
and empty room — files, furniture, vouchers, checks, and business rec-
ords were gone. We still had to supply the subscribers with nine issues
more, yet we had no equipment and not one cent in the bank account
of the Review.

It was a challenge. We hurried over to Third Avenue and for
twenty dollars refurnished the office. The loss of the contributors'
cards, however, was irreparable. I could never, in spite of my best
efforts, recover either them or the missing funds.

The strain to finance the Review was so great that after June no
more issues came out until December — the printer trusted us as far
as he was able from month to month. Often the bank account was
down to the last hundred dollars, just enough to hold it open. Yet it
might be necessary to mail letters'; the call might be urgent. I was
hesitant to spend that last amount, but I believed faith could bring
anything to realization. Invariably when I operated on that principle

260 MARGARET SANGER

and did what I was impelled to do, money poured in perhaps ten times
over. Always we cleaned the slate at the end of the year.

This was one of the periods of getting roots in and waiting for the
organism to grow, of quiescence before the new beginning and quick-
ening. I kept going, conscious that with every act I was progressing in
accord with a universal law of evolution — moral evolution but evolu-
tion just the same.

This belief seemed at times to force locked doors. It enabled me to
dictate hundreds of letters, to interview dozens of people, to debate,
or to lecture, all in twenty- four hours. Day after day I attended parlor
meetings, night after night open forums, returning home too tired to
eat, too excited to sleep. Frequently at seven in the morning the tele-
phone started ringing ; somebody wanted to catch me before I left the
house.

For the purpose of having a more solid and substantial basis on
which to operate the Review, the New York Women's Publishing
Company was incorporated in May, 19 18; shares were sold at ten
dollars each. The women who gave both monetary and moral support
were the wives of business men who advised them how to conduct
this organization in the proper fashion. Each month Mary Knoblauch
opened her charming apartment for the regular meetings any cor-
poration was required to hold.

The movement can never be disassociated in my mind from Frances
Ackermann, who, at the suggestion of Mabel Spinney of Greenwich
House, came to us as Treasurer. She was exceptionally able and was
soon one of our bulwarks, remaining with us eleven years. Her family
was wrapped up in orthodoxy — church and Wall Street and the status
quo in politics — but Frances' interests were much broader, and she was
not content to lead the usual type of life ordained by her social and
financial standing.

Tall, very thin, wearing her clothes with an air, Frances was one of
the finest persons I have ever known. To her, fair play amounted to a
religion ; she was so highly sensitive that she lay awake at night after
merely reading of an injustice done to anybody. To hundreds of con-
scientious objectors who were incarcerated during the War because
of pacifist or strike activities she sent cigarette money, magazines,
stationery — always anonymously — assisting their families and sug-

A STOUT HEART TO A STEEP HILL 26 1

gesting plans for their own futures. Her death was not only a blow
to us but a blow to any endeavor that was seeking understanding.
Many lifers who depended on her for brightening luxuries must now
wonder what has become of her.

In 1920 Anne Kennedy came to help boost the circulation of the
Review and gain further financial aid for it. She, was a Calif ornian
with wide club experience, and had two children. Fair, in her thir-
ties, cheerful, and a good mixer, she was most maternal-looking
with her soft gray hair and sweet face ; you felt you could lay your
head on her bosom and tell her the story of your life.

The incorporation had heralded a new trend wherein we could
have a recognized policy. When the Review had first been started I had
had to beg authors to write. Free speech was their favorite theme,
and their pieces were inferior, but they were the only things I could
fall back upon. I used to ask possible contributors, "Don't you agree
that these poor mothers should have no more babies ?"

"Of course, but where's there any article in that?"

Then I had to suggest ideas, show them how to link these up
with larger sociological aspects, until they began to cast into the
arena legal, medical, eugenic compositions. The material on free
speech continued to come in, but we did not need to print it any longer.

Incidentally, we now secured second-class mailing privileges. Soon
afterwards I happened to be talking to a cousin who worked in the
Post Office, a very young boy in his early twenties, who kept assailing
me with questions about the Review. I could not understand his un-
precedented interest, and asked, "Why are you so curious ?"

"Well, I'm the official reader. It'll save my having to wade through
every issue if you'll tell me ahead of time just what your policy's
going to be."

"Do you make the decisions?"

"That's my job. If any seem objectionable I send them on to Wash-
ington."

I was horrified to find this adolescent in a position which permitted
him to pass judgment on such serious matters, but I was able to re-
assure him ; the course we had adopted would in no way interfere with
retaining our second-class mailing privileges.

Many of the buyers of the Review had been disappointed because

262 MARGARET SANGER

it contained no practical information. "I have your magazine. All in
there is true but what I want to know is how not to have another baby
next year." Thousands of letters were sent out explaining that the
Review could not print birth control information. Nevertheless, some
of the appeals, particularly from women who lived on lonely, remote
farms, were so heart-rending that I simply had to furnish them copies
of Family Limitation, though urging them to go to their physicians.

Every once in a while I had a telephone message to come down to
the Post Office at an appointed hour. I did so, wondering and un-
certain. Was the interview to be about the Review, Family Limitation,
or what ?

The official in the legal department whom I always saw, fatherly
though not old, used to say, "Now, Mrs. Sanger, you're still violating
the law by sending your pamphlet through the mails. If you keep this
up they'll put you in jail again."

I objected, "The Government and I had this out years ago. The
Federal case was dismissed."

"It never can be settled while we get these protests."

To prove the Post Office was not having such an easy time of it, he
pulled open a drawer and inside was a little pile of pamphlets and
letters from religious fanatics, self -constituted moralists of one kind
or another, women as well as men, who had received their copies and
then complained. He showed me envelopes addressed to the Governor
of New York, to the President of the United States. I studied the
handwriting to see whether I could recognize it as identical with any
that had come to me. Perhaps the postmark was Wichita, Kansas;
there could not be many from a town of that size, and presently I re-
membered the request. It was a shattering thing to see that drawer.
I had been earnestly trying to aid despairing mothers, and had been
betrayed.

"Here's this proof against you, Mrs. Sanger. What are you going
to do about it?"

"Nothing. As long as these women ask me to help them, I'm going
to do so."

I intended to continue to the limit of my resources whether or not
I had help from those whom I had originally counted upon. In order
to make women's clubs feel the need as I did I had often gone miles

A STOUT HEART TO A STEEP HILL 263

at my own expense to present a topic that had taken me years to
prepare and then had had to express it to the accompaniment of the
clatter of dishes or the stirring of spoons in after-dinner coffees. The
members had seemed to have their minds on hot rolls or had been
fidgeting to get on to the bridge tables. Sometimes a few, who had
come to dabble in sentimentality, had experienced a pleasant emotional
response, "Oh, the poor things," but that had been as far as it had
gone.

The continued apathy of such organizations disappointed me in-
tensely ; the desire to build up a structure appeared to dominate them
all. I had lost faith in their sincerity, respect for their courage, and at
this time had no reason to anticipate assistance from them. To upbraid,
accuse, or censure them for not doing what I had hoped was useless,
but I resolved that I was never again going to talk to them, and, when
it seemed necessary that they be addressed, I sent others to do it.

My nervousness ahead of lectures continued to be akin to illness.
All through the years it has been like a nightmare even to think of a
pending speech. I promised enthusiastically to go here or there, and
then tried to forget it. The morning it was to be delivered I awakened
with a panicky feeling which grew into a sort of terror if I allowed
myself to dwell on it. It was fatal to eat before a meeting.

Some people can keep an audience rocking with laughter and yet
get over a message. But I cannot. Seldom do my hearers have any-
thing merry from me. Advisers often say, "Lighten up your subject."
I have always resented this ; I am the protagonist of women who have
nothing to laugh at.

Heywood Broun once remarked that I had no sense of humor. I
was surprised at him, but I could understand his statement in a way ;
he had been at only a few meetings as chairman and I had been seri-
ous to the point of deadliness, purposely bringing forth laborious facts
and dramatic statistics. I was grasping at an opportunity to reach his
audience because, whenever he was moved by anything deeply, he
wrote a story in his column which by reason of its effective irony
and smooth prose swayed others to the same extent.

I have had much fun, although it may have penetrated only to the
intimate circle of friends. Once after giving what I thought was a
very up-to-date, spirited talk at the Waldorf-Astoria, a dear old lady,

264 MARGARET SANGER

at least in her middle eighties, tottered towards me with the aid of a
cane and in trembling voice quavered, "I have traveled across the
country to hear you speak, Miss Sangster. My mother used to read
your poems to me when I was a little girl, and I feel this is a great
day for me to be able to clasp your hand." She had confused me with
the poetess, Margaret E. Sangster, who in the mid-Nineteenth Century
had been a regular contributor to religious magazines.

L Inevitably I have been constantly torn between my compulsion to do
this work and a haunting feeling that I was robbing my children of
time to which they were entitled. Back in 19 13 I had had some vague
notion of being able to spend all my summers with them at Province-
town. That visionary hope had been immediately dissipated because
too many painters began to discover it and the place became littered
with easels and smocks. Gene O'Neill's plays were being produced on
the wharf opposite Mary Heaton Vorse's house, and these brought
many more people. I wanted to get away even further, and so did Jack
Reed, who had also sought sanctuary there. A real estate agent took
him to near-by Truro where the feet of New Yorkers had not yet trod,
and I was invited to come along. We saw a little house on a little hill,
one of the most ancient in the village. Below it the Pamet River wound
like a silver ribbon to the ocean. An old sea captain had squared and
smoothed and fitted the timbers, brought them up from the Carolinas
in a sailing vessel, and fastened them tightly together with wooden
pegs. The kitchen was bright and warm, and seemed as though many
cookies and pies had been baked in it.

Jack bought the cottage, but he was never able to live there. As a
staff correspondent of the Metropolitan Magazine he was dashing
from the Colorado Fuel and Iron strike to the European War and
back again to New York. In 191 7, knowing I, too, had looked at it
with longing eyes, he asked whether I would like to buy it;Jie was
starting for Russia the next day and had to have ready money. By a
lucky chance I had just received a check for a thousand dollars in pay-
ment for some Chicago lectures. We exchanged check and deed. He
left the next day for the land of promise whither Bill Haywood, his
friend, had already gone and whence neither was to return.

Big Bill, who had steadily advocated resistance to conscription, had
been arrested and freed on bail furnished by Jessie Ashley. She had

A STOUT HEART TO A STEEP HILL 265

forfeited it gladly to have him safely out of the country. I had had a
long talk with him before he had made up his mind definitely to leave.
The conversation brought back to me the picture of the times he and
I had walked up and down the Cape Cod sands and he had given me
such good counsel about not jeopardizing the happiness of the children.

Those who had opposed Bill for his "hands in the pocket" advice
at the Paterson strike were the same who were opposing his jumping
his bail. Since the day we had together visited the C.G.T. meetings in
Paris, Bill had come to see the virtues of expediency ; that, rather than
languish in jail where he could accomplish no useful purpose, a revolu-
tionary should, if he could, exile himself. "He who fights and runs
away, will live to fight another day." This, according to the American
idea, was cowardice — you should stay and be a martyr. But to Bill
it was now merely shortsighted. He had concluded that the average
worker when he went in for rioting and hand-to-hand combat was
beaten before he had begun. He realized the workers had been split by
the War ; they had not united and stood up against conscription with
any backbone. They could not as yet be depended upon as a force, but
some day he hoped to return and reorganize them.

Truro provided the children with three carefree months every
summer in what still seems to me one of the most beautiful spots in the
world. For several years I hung on to this dream of being with them
constantly, but it was only a dream. I used to go down to open the
house and perhaps snatch a week or so there before being obliged to
hurry back, but father and my sister Nan were good foster-parents.
This house was eventually to burn as had the one in Hastings ; fate
seemed to decree I should not be tempted to slip back into peaceful
domesticity.

Nor did I have all those hoped for years of watching the boys
grow from one stage to another. I had had to analyze the situation
— either to keep them at home under the supervision of servants who
might perhaps be incompetent, and to have no more than the pleas-
ure of seeing them safely to bed, or else to sacrifice my maternal
feelings and put them in country schools directed by capable masters
where they could lead a healthy, regular life. Having come to this latter
decision I sent them off fairly young, and thereafter could only visit
them over week-ends or on the rare occasions when I was speaking in

266 MARGARET SANGER

the vicinity. If the desire to see them grew beyond control, I took the
first train and received the shock of finding them thoroughly contented
in the companionship they had made for themselves ; after the initial
excitement of greeting had passed away they ran off again to their
games.

At times the homesickness for them seemed too much to bear ; espe-
cially was this true in the Fourteenth Street studio. When I came in
late at night the fire was dead in the grate, the book open on the table,
the glove dropped on the floor, the pillow rumpled on the sofa — all the
same — just as I had left them a day, a week, or a month before. That
first chill of loneliness was always appalling. I wanted, as a child does,
to be like other people ; I wanted to be able to sink gratefully into the
warmth and glow of a loving family welcome.

The winter of 191 7-18 was particularly hard; the snow drifted
high and lasted long, and it took forced cheer to keep your spirits up.
Dr. Mary Halton assured me that with ceaseless financial worry, in-
adequate rest, incessant traveling, improper nourishment, I could not
survive long. When, therefore, a publisher asked me for a book on
labor problems, I snatched ten-year-old Grant out of school and set
off for California, taking a small place at Coronado where I sat myself
down for three months to write and to get acquainted with my son.

I loved the sunshine. It was a pleasure to be out-of-doors, to have
peace and quiet and the leisure to arrange my thoughts and put them
on paper. I had no inclination towards a labor book, but thoroughly
enjoyed letting loose my pent-up feelings on Woman and the New
Race. It was good to classify reasons and set them in order. My opin-
ions did emerge, and it was a great release.

I was vividly reminded of prison one day when Grant came home
from the school he was attending, both his eyes pretty dirty-looking.
I asked him why he had been fighting.

"I don't want to tell you."

'Td like to know."

"Well, this boy told all the fellows my mother'd been in jail."

"What did you do?"

"I hit him, and he hit me back. He said, 'Your mother's a jailbird,'
and I said, 'She's not.' Then another fellow said, 'My mother says
your mother went to jail too.' "

A STOUT HEART TO A STEEP HILL 267

Grant had replied, "That wasn't my mother, that was another

Margaret Sanger."

"How could you say that, Grant? You know it wasn't true."
"Mother," he replied profoundly, "you could never make those

fellows understand."

Chapter Twenty-one

THUS TO REVISIT

THE event of my visit to London in 1920 was the beginning of
my friendship with H. G. Wells. There was no aloofness or
coldness in approaching him, no barriers to break down as with most
Englishmen ; his twinkling eyes were like those of a mischievous boy.
I was pleased to find he had no beard and no white hair, because-^
seemed to me I had heard of him since I had begun to think at all.

Wells had ranged every field of knowledge, had dared to invade
the sacrosanct precincts of the historian, the economist, and the scien-
tist and, though a layman in these fields, had used his extraordinary
gifts to interpret the past and present and even prophesy the future;
in novel after novel he had shocked England by championing women's
right to a freer life.

We in the United States were just beginning to be affected by so-
ciological concepts; only Henry George and Edward Bellamy had
previously opened up this new world of the imagination. Now here
was Wells giving a fresh picture of what could be if man had an ideal
system of society that was workable. At Columbia Colony he had been
quoted repeatedly. On my lecture tour in 19 16 his name had been
on everybody's lips, and he had signed the letter to President Wilson
protesting against the Federal indictment. I believed he had influenced
the American intelligentsia more than any other one man.

For good reason countless faithful friends had attached themselves
to Wells, and he included in his varied, intricate, and unpredictable
personality a capacity for loyally loving both individuals and human-
ity.

268

THUS TO REVISIT 269

People who had never met Wells always thought they knew him
best, especially Londoners. I was stopping with three maiden sisters
in Hampstead Gardens, and a great furor arose as soon as it was
known in the household/ that Mrs. Wells had sent me an invitation for
what was to be my first week-end at Easton Glebe in Essex. What was
I to wear ? Was I going to take the blue net or the flowered chiffon ?
They were greatly disappointed when I carried only a small bag in
which there was no room for fluffy evening gowns.

Wells himself was waiting on the platform at Dunmow Station,
and we drove in his little car, called the Pumpkin, to Easton Glebe,
a part of the Warwick Estate on which he held a life lease. The former
rectory was built of old stone, ivy-covered ; lovely lawns were spread
around it. Early morning tea was served in your room, shoes put out
at night were properly polished, hot water was plentiful for your bath,
and extra pitchers were brought with towels wrapped around carefully
to keep in the steam.

During the course of the next two days I realized more than ever
before how sensitive H.G. was to the slightest intonation. To be with
him meant you had to be on the alert every second lest you miss some-
thing of him. He could be amusing, witty, sarcastic, brilliant, flirta-
tious, and yet profound at once, all in his thin, small voice, speaking
high up into the roof of his mouth, as do many English, instead of
back in the throat as we do.

I returned Monday evening about midnight to my room at Hamp-
stead, having spent the day in town seeing people. But no sooner had
I closed the door than steps pattered in the hallway and a soft hand
tapped. In came the three ladies, hair in braids, warmly and most
modestly swathed in voluminous, white cotton nighties, long-sleeved
and tight around the neck. They had stayed wide-awake to hear all
about my week-end. I told^them as much as I could remember of the
place and the stimulating fellow guests, one in particular with whom
I had been having an interesting discussion. When I had finished the
eldest leaned forward and hesitatingly but loudly whispered, "Did he
try to kiss you ?•"

"What? Who?" I asked, having in mind the man I had just been
praising.

"Why — why — don't you know ?"

27O MARGARET SANGER

"Know what?"

She looked a little abashed at this, and another voice explained
apologetically, "Sister means that Wells has a magnetic influence over
women !"

"Was he fascinating?" the youngest eagerly took up the catechism.

For two solid hours I was bombarded with questions; H.G. was
the Don Juan of spinsterhood in England. That there was a Mrs.
Wells for whom Mr. Wells cared deeply did not matter in the least to
them.

I wish I could do justice to Jane, as Catherine Wells was affection-
ately called. This devoted mother, perfect companion, was the com-
plete helpmate, managing H.G.'s finances, reading the proofs of his
books, seeing that all editions were up-to-date, letting no publisher
be delinquent in his royalties. She did not pretend to be a Feminist ;
she was there to protect him, performing the duties of an English wife
towards her husband and appearing with him so that they might make
a united front to the world. The relationship between them was on a
fine plane.

Although H.G. had told me once "the sun would set if. anything
ever happened to Jane" I felt that he had never put her adequately
into his books as the great woman she really was ; he was too close to
her. After she died, his touching introduction to The Book of Cather-
ine Wells proved that he realized what she had been in his life.

Jane was always mothering people and looking after their comfort.
At a later time when I happened to be at Easton Glebe, she was dis-
tressed and anxious that I was taking it for granted I had to have an
ice-pack on my neck every night because my tubercular glands were
bothering me. She insisted and insisted something must be done, until
finally my tonsils were removed, the true source of my trouble. I owed
this tremendous relief to Jane's interest, which would not let me go
on being sick.

The gay wit and gift for mimicry were not confined to H.G. alone.
On one of my visits I was shown a new bathroom, and we viewed
solemnly the tiny, almost microscopic, tub. Jane was slight and small,
and I was quite sure it was meant for her and not for H.G.'s rotund
frame. She maintained, however, it had been installed for his conven-
ience, and made funny suction noises as though a large and deep well

THUS TO REVISIT 27 1

were being pumped dry. I was hilarious, but he, pretending to be
irritated, yet laughing too, growled at her, "What are you trying to
do? Make my bathing an international joke?"

The little things H.G. said, many of them jibes at himself, were
always amusing. Even more so were the drawings with which he dec-
orated his letters. If he did not want to go somewhere he might perhaps
illustrate his reluctance by picturing himself being dragged off, or, if
he desired the absence rather than the presence of a person at a meet-
ing, he would portray him being pushed out unceremoniously. These
ingenious caricatures allowed many subtleties which even he would
not like to put into words over his own signature.

Jane was unsurpassed when it came to charades, and never minded
having the house turned upside down in the search for properties. But
the Wells family did not have to depend upon orthodox pastimes ; they
often made up their own. H.G. had invented a ball game which was
played Sunday mornings in a barn made over into a sort of indoor
court. Unlike tennis, many could take part at once and the sport was
so exhausting that when they finished they were usually dripping with
perspiration. I did not play; other novices seemed to be doing badly
enough without me. If you did not feel up to anything so strenuous,
you could take a short walk through the charming garden which Jane
had so lovingly arranged, or a long one through the woods, by the
lakes, or bordering the streams of the Warwick Estate, of which H.G.
had free use. Every season had its different aspects of beauty.

Sunday afternoons and evenings were especially merry. The at-
mosphere at Easton Glebe was like nothing else, something that does
not exist here, where the elders have their bridge and their conversa-
tion and the young go dancing or to the movies. There, all ages mixed
together in fun, in laughter. The two sons, Frank and "Gyp," who
were then at Cambridge, might bring from ten to fifteen friends home
for tea, a great function over which Jane so graciously presided. The
maids went out after setting the table for supper and preparing cold
meats on the buffet, and the party then took care of itself, everybody
serving everybody else. The boys were full of devilment and it was
most uproarious.

I often wondered how the unexpected arrivals were provided for,
but Jane was a remarkable hostess ; I have known her to have a house-

272 MARGARET SANGER

ful at Easton Glebe for lunch and give a brilliant dinner in London
that same evening. Every guest was planned for, no one was ever hud-
dled with another, appropriate games were produced or friends in-
vited who might be interesting or helpful. When they were ready to
leave, all were put on the most convenient trains and returned to town
with as little trouble to themselves as possible.

From 1920 on I never went to England without spending part of
the time with H.G., and many of the most attractive people I met were
at Easton Glebe. I always came away enriched by these contacts and
the talks we had together. Conversation was a combination of current
topics, science, philosophy, history. The English might not have had
the same light flippancy or such a scattered fund of information as the
average American, who usually qualified his statements with, "I read
that — " or "I know someone who — ," but they did speak out of their
own experience. Furthermore, they could toss the ball of repartee
back and forth objectively and not become irritated or let creep into
their voices that personal note which implied they had now settled the
whole thing.

Each one at Easton Glebe had his turn in the spotlight ; it was never
a monologue, which a man in H.G.'s position might have made it. No
subject could be mentioned that he did not have its complete history
and a definite opinion on it as well, including Neo-Malthusianism in
all its implications.

These week-ends were inspiration and recreation. The serious duty
which called me to England was lecturing. The Neo-Malthusian
League had few speakers at that time to address women audiences,
and wished me to test out the response to their propaganda.

English public sentiment on birth control had vastly changed since
I had been there in 191 5, largely because Marie Stopes' book had had
such wide circulation during the after- War period ; her voice had made
articulate the feelings of the millions of unemployed. That people
now knew what birth control meant was due in part also to Harold
Cox, one of the finest orators of his generation, who had been the
first to point out that its condemnation by medical men and Anglican
clergy should carry little weight, because the birth rates among them
were lower than those of almost any other classes. Notable exceptions
who had come out favorably were Sir James Barr, ex-President of the

THUS TO REVISIT 273

British Medical Association, Dr. C. Killick Millard, Health Officer of
Leicester in the North, Dean Inge of St. Paul's, and the Bishop of
Birmingham, who was Chairman of the English National Birth Rate
Commission ; England was accustomed to clarifying new and con-
troversial subjects, by such bodies, summoning experts to testify.

Dr. Alice Vickery arranged for me to give a series of talks, many
before lower middle-class workers' wives who belonged to the
Women's Co-operative Guild. In different districts of London they
came together, paying their little bit, perhaps sixpence a month, to
listen to speakers, afterwards serving tea and conversing in a friendly
way among themselves. Though their economic uncertainty made
them resigned to having ten or twelve children, the fact that the Guild
had just brought out a book describing some of the tragic cases of its
own members and the deaths from over-childbearing helped to pave
the way.

Of all the slums I visited in trams, on buses, via the Underground,
the one of worst repute at the time was the dockyards section of
Rotherhithe. I held a small demonstration clinic there — in a sense the
first of its kind in England. The eager women who came, amazingly
ignorant of any possible beauty in marriage, were envious of a few
in the community who, though the fathers were receiving no higher
wages than their own husbands, had had only two or three children
and consequently could afford to send them to the trade school. They
themselves were, if not sliding backward, at least no more than hold-
ing their own, but those few families were definitely on the way up in
the social scale. And it had all come to pass because Dr. Vickery and
Anne Martin, a friend of hers who had labored there for two decades
as a social worker, had given some contraceptive information about
ten years earlier.

Although Dr. Vickery had on numerous occasions raised the ques-
tion of birth control before gatherings bent on other matters, it fell to
my lot to discuss it first as a public health issue. I was told I might
have three minutes to address a national health Conference on Mater-
nal and Infant Welfare to be held at Brighton. Considering the four
hours required in transit this might seem a short time, but I was happy
to have even as much as that. So I went.

With the prospect of reaching university students I traveled to

274 MARGARET SANGER

Cambridge. In the midst of the weathered spires, the ivied halls, and
the storied dignity of Trinity and Kings, Noel Porter and his wife,
Bevan, had converted an old public house, The Half Moon, into a
home, yet had managed to keep its original atmosphere of convivial
hospitality. The tap-room had once opened directly on Little St. Mary's
Lane ; now the bar had been removed, but the ancient sign still swung
back and forth and the smoky ceilings and mildewed paneling were
the same as when former generations had congregated there over mugs
of ale.

Opposite was a tiny, old-fashioned graveyard, no longer used, and
I went out there and let the sun beat against my aching back. It was
amusing to have to resort to a cemetery for privacy, but the house was
constantly filled with hatless students coming and going through the
enormous downstairs room which served as rendezvous for all. In the
afternoons these youths on the threshold of manhood came to talk
over the questions which were perplexing them ; in the evenings they
had little meetings, at one of which I spoke.

Guy Aldred, who was in Scotland, had planned my schedule there,
and I had three weeks of a Scottish summer — bluebells so thick in
spots that the ground was azure, long twilights when the lavender
heather faded the hills into purple.

When I had been in Glasgow before, I had encountered only officials,
but on this occasion I met the people in their homes and found them
quite opposite to the stingy, tight-fisted, middle-class stereotype. They
were hospitable, generous, mentally alert, just as witty as the Irish and
in much the same way, which rather surprised me.

Fourth of July, Sunday, we had a noon meeting on the Glasgow
Green. Nearly two thousand shipyard workers in caps and baggy
corduroys stood close together listening in utter, dead stillness without
cough or whisper. That evening I spoke in a hall under Socialist aus-
pices, Guy Aldred acting as chairman. One old-timer said he had been
a party member for eleven years, attending Sunday night lectures
regularly, but never before had he been able to induce his wife to come ;
tonight he could not keep her home. "Look !" he cried in amazement.
"The women have crowded the men out of this hall. I never saw so
many wives of comrades before."

THUS TO REVISIT 275

The men were there, partly through curiosity to hear the American
and partly through interest in the subject, ready to fight the ancient
battle of Marx against Malthus. Efforts of the English Neo-Malthu-
sians to introduce birth control to the masses had been hampered not
only by the opposition of the upper classes, but more especially by the
persistent hostility of the orthodox Socialists.

Marx, dealing with problems after they had arisen, had taught that
any reform likely to dull the edge of poverty was bad for Socialism
because it made labor less dissatisfied. It followed that if a man had
to fight for the hungers and necessities of ten or twelve children, he
made a better revolutionary. "Let 'em have as many as they can," was
the cry. On the other hand, if birth control were practiced by the work-
ing classes, the wage earner who could support two children and knew
how not to have more was going to be content and would not struggle
against conditions of economic insecurity. Hence he was likely to for-
get "the Revolution."

Knowing that the Scotch took mental notes of items on which to
debate, I had tried to prepare myself well, and I produced the unan-
swerable argument to this theory. "Why do you demand higher wages
then," I asked, "when what you really want is privation? If misery
is your weapon you should not insist on an eight-hour day but on a
twelve- or f ourteen-hour one. You should pile up your grievances, and
pile them up higher. However, in spite of your best efforts I believe
your hunger-revolution will, as it has always done, capitulate to what-
ever force or government will fill your stomachs."

Socialists, like anarchists and syndicalists, were used to contesting
Malthusianism on economic grounds, but, unlike the others, they had
as a part of their platform the freedom of woman. I pointed out that
she could have the sort of freedom they desired for her right here and
now through birth control.

When I ended, Guy Aldred asked, "Now are there any questions ?"
After a few somewhat irrelevant ones, silence fell ; confronted by their
own philosophy they could see it. One man finally rose, "We'd like to
hear what the Chairman thinks of all this. Does he believe birth con-
trol will do what the lady speaker claims for it ?" Apparently they were
waiting for their cue. But Guy Aldred was not to be drawn. After

276 MARGARET SANGER

giving him an opportunity to express himself they plunged in and
said their say. Even some women who had never been on their feet
before got up to tell dramatic, vivid, personal stories.

The next day I was on my way to a town not far from Dunfermline,
Andrew Carnegie's birthplace. I arrived about four o'clock in a driv-
ing storm, lacking both umbrella and raincoat. No taxi had ever
graced the railroad station, and we trudged through the rain to the
cottage of one of the "most advanced friends of labor." I was soaking
wet up to the knees. A hurry-call was sent to neighbors for dry cloth-
ing, but among that population of five thousand not a single woman
had an extra skirt to lend, and only after long search was a new pair
of Sunday shoes forthcoming.

Because there was not an inn within miles, I slept that night with
my hostess in the one bed the house contained ; the husband stretched
himself out on two chairs in the kitchen. Since Sylvia Pankhurst had
been similarly accommodated just a few months before, I knew I was
having the best the village afforded.

The inhabitants had been dispatched from Lancashire factory
towns during the War for special munitions work, and here they had
stayed and made their homes. Practically all had been apprenticed to
the mills at the age of eight or nine. Girls, because they were destined
for marriage and therefore needed no education, had worked ten or
twelve hours a day throughout their adolescence, and even after their
weddings up to the time pregnancy was well advanced. As a result, the
young mothers, who had never, from childhood to maturity, had a
chance to become rested and get the fatigue out of their systems, had
apparently transmitted their weariness to their children; the first-
born were sleepy, inert, and always tired. A doctor told me it was
common for boys and girls of five, six, and seven to fall asleep at
their school desks and have to be awakened.

When I had arrived in England I had gone to see Havelock in
the quaint old Cornwall village where he was living alone since Edith's
death. Winding pathways, well-trodden and embraced on either side
by rambling shrubbery and verbena, led from his house to the sea
hundreds of feet below. The waves dashed continuously against the
crags and rocks, and thousands of gulls shrieked or sailed majestically
almost in front of my eyes.

THUS TO REVISIT 277

We had then talked about going to Ireland where I could make a
foray into my own genealogy. Mother's ancestors at some stage had
been the same as Edward Fitzgerald's and I thought I might find some
of the places from which they had sprung. I had no exact information
— just tradition from childhood days. Now, after my strenuous lec-
turing, I needed a brief holiday, and Havelock also wanted a vacation ;
so we joined forces.

My primary purpose was frustrated because after half a century
nobody in any of the little villages seemed to know anything definite.
At Glengariff they said, "Sure, and I thought it was Killarney your
grandfather was born in." But at Killarney I was told, "Oh, it was
Cork your family came from. My grandmother knew them very well."

More difficult to surmount than the vague discursiveness of these
good people was the Sinn Fein Rebellion, in the thick of which we
found ourselves. The night before we reached Cork there had been a
raid and the leaders were in hiding. Everywhere we went we could
sense a subtle, surreptitious undercurrent — in the hotels, in the res-
taurants, among small, whispering groups which dispersed when any
stranger approached.

Ireland had great natural beauty, and I was sorry to see the begin-
nings of ugly, modern industrialism cropping up, especially in Cork
with the Ford factory. The mustard-colored kilts of the men aston-
ished me ; I had never known the Irish wore them, but they were try-
ing to bring back their ancestral dress along with the Gaelic language.
Always their kindness and interest and the sadness in their voices
moved me deeply. They were never too sad, however, to give a quick
turn to a phrase. One morning the tram in which we were riding sud-
denly stopped. Nobody knew why ; everybody was complaining. Then
from a side street came a handful of Black and Tans with bayonets
fixed. I asked the Irishman sitting beside me, "What does that mean?"

"You should know," he replied. "Those are Wilson's Fourteen
Pints."

Havelock was a delightful companion, not loquacious, but keenly
interested in everything, and forever jotting down his copious notes.
We hired a two-wheeled jaunting car in which we sat back to back,
and in this way bumped from Glengariff to Killarney. Occasionally the
sun broke through for half an hour, but it was wet that year — potatoes

278 MARGARET SANGER

and hay were rotting on the ground because the sun did not shine long
enough to dry them.

We arrived at the inn, drenched and sopping. Havelock, with his
typically English dread of a cold, went to bed, but I stayed up talking
with a young woman and three equally young traveling priests — Sinn
Feiners all. We chatted desultorily until I happened to mention I had
a letter to the widow of the hero, Skeffington, who had been killed in
the disturbances.

The company, assuming me to be one with their cause, immediately
became most friendly. The girl began discussing higher education for
her sex. I asked her how she could keep on when she married and had
the inevitable succession of offspring. The priests, somewhat to my
surprise, fell in with my ideas by deploring too large families ; some
of the older sons and daughters had to emigrate, and even those who
were left could not care adequately for their parents. It would be better
for the Catholic Church as well as for the world if they could help
people to have only a few children and bring them up decently. I felt
hopeful because they were speaking of birth control as solving some
of their own problems ; they were saying exactly what I most wanted
them to say.

Several happy days we spent at Killarney, exploring on foot,
on horseback, and in boats. The men who drove the cart or rowed us
through the lakes always knew the old myths of the mountains and
poured into our ears tales of leprechauns and other "little people." You
heard the word "divil" more than any other. Here the divil, so they
told us, had left his step, there he had run away. The shape of every
mountain, the twist of every stream had their stories.

Wherever we went women, lean and elderly, wearing tiny shoulder
shawls and calico print dresses, fairly started out of the hillsides, bare-
headed, barefooted, complexions like roses, and eyes as blue as the sky.
Yet their faces were hungry and worn. Getting on in years as they
were, they could and did run faster than our ponies. When we spurred
forward they came right along, flattering, cajoling, uttering prayers
and "God bless you's," calling on all the saints to preserve you if you
would buy a drop of "Mountain Dew," which was so good for your
health. If you bought this Irish whiskey from one, another took her
place, and, quite undiscouraged, began again the flow of sales talk.

THUS TO REVISIT 279

One of our last days, when the wraiths of the lake dimmed the
emerald hills, we walked to red-bricked Killarney House, to which, as
Havelock said, nature was adding her own wild beauty to the beauty
that man had made.

All of' Ireland had seemed draped in mist and sadness and, lovely
as it had been, I never wanted to go back.

V.

Chapter Twenty-two

DO YE HEAR THE CHILDREN WEEPING?

AFTER the Irish interlude I was ready to go on to Germany to
jLjL carry out the most important objective of my journey abroad.
It had become obvious that progress depended on finding a means of
contraception, cheap, harmless, easily applied. Way back in 19 14
Havelock had seen in some of the last medical journals to come out
of Germany an advertisement of a chemical contraceptive. He had
mentioned it to me, and ever since I had been eager to track it down.
In pre-War Germany every advertised product had been required to
live up to the claims made for it ; the public must not be misled. Thus
I was convinced that if the notice had stated it was to prevent con-
ception, the assertion was true. No news of it had come since the War,
and I wished to ascertain whether it was still being manufactured.
Perhaps this formula would be the solution to our problem.

I had a secondary reason also for going to Germany — to investigate
the decline in the birth rate. It was said half the married women had
become barren during the blockade for lack of proper food. I was
always looking for evidence to support and strengthen our arguments,
and, consequently, wanted to discover what had been learned of the
relation between vitamins and fertility.

Berlin was cold and dark when Rose Witcop and I, about eleven
at night, arrived at Neukoln, a special proletarian section of the city.
The train was late, an unusual state of things in efficient Germany, but
this was the period of her greatest disorganization. The telegram which
had been sent to Rose's sister and brother-in-law, Milly and Rudolph

280

DO YE HEAR THE CHILDREN WEEPING? 28l

Rocker, had apparently not been delivered ; nobody met us. There were
no taxis, no carriages, no lamps, no lights in the windows to relieve
the pitch blackness. A sleepy, disgruntled porter led us across the street
to an insignificant hotel. He knocked at the door ; a head popped out
of a window above. "Two ladies want to stay overnight." The pro-
prietress said she could give us nothing to eat, but that we could have
a room. We accepted gladly, climbed up a ladder into the same bed,
piled high with feathered mattresses above and below us, and settled
ourselves to comforting sleep after the long and tiresome journey.

In the morning, refreshed, we took a tram to the Rockers' small
apartment. Rudolph was a syndicalist, a friend of Portet, and had
been interned in a concentration camp near London during the War.
Both Milly and Rudolph had suffered great privations after their re-
turn. But, although food was very scarce, they were more than prodi-
gal and kind in sharing with us.

Germany was still no place for casual visitors in 1920. She seemed
dead, crushed, broken. Street traffic, even in a metropolis the size of
Berlin, was slight. I noted particularly the grim silence everywhere ;
people had forgotten how to smile. They were thankful for the Revo-
lution, but it had not brought much relief, and the winter to come was
dreaded. Instead of displaying food or clothing, the windows of shop
after shop on street after street were decorated only with streamers
of colored paper.

Everybody was ravenous for fresh vegetables ; money meant noth-
ing, food everything. I saw old peasant women coming in from the
country with bags of potatoes on their backs. Fifteen minutes after
emptying them on to pushcarts they were sold out. The only fruit
to be had were plums, and that is how I remember it was late summer
in Berlin ; it is curious how such memories crop up.

Ordinarily I could go without eating if I had plenty of water, but
in Berlin I found myself haunting grocery stores like a hungry animal,
examining each new article avariciously. I cannot as a rule bear tinned
milk and will not give it to babies, yet here when I saw a can of Amer-
ican evaporated milk, I found myself viewing it with glowing eyes.
I was disgusted with myself. Nothing satisfied my appetite except
eggs, and these, along with milk, could be purchased only on pre-
scription from a doctor. Meat was reduced to half a pound a week for

282 MARGARET SANGER

each person, but I had no ration card. A neighbor of the Rockers
obtained some bread for me and gave me her potatoes although she
and her three lovely daughters had only rice as a substitute. I was in
tears over her generosity.

For months many families had existed on nothing but turnips.
They ate turnip soup, turnips raw, turnips mashed, turnip salad, turnip
coffee, until their whole systems revolted physically against the sight
of turnips. The contact with other persons in trams, halls, churches,
even streets, was nauseating; in a few minutes the fumes of turnip
from their bodies was so offensive that they became almost unendur-
able to themselves.

I went into a two-room home, clean but overflowing with ten chil-
dren, five born since the War, starvation horribly stamped on their
faces. The oldest was twelve — still too young to work. The father,
a locksmith, had no job. All were living on a hundred marks received
every week from Government Unemployment Insurance. It was now
Saturday, and not one crumb or morsel remained to tide them over
until the next payment on Monday. They had eaten no breakfast, no
dinner, and the father had gone to the woods to search for mushrooms
to keep them alive.

Even men who had employment were working only three days a
week, averaging a hundred and fifty marks for a family, and marks
were fifty to the American dollar. The best food had to be given to
them because they were the earners. Women were the real sufferers ;
they had to go without or subsist on what they could scrape together.
They nursed their babies beyond two years to supply milk, and all their
time was occupied in a constant hunt to find nourishment for the
older ones.

I heard countless stories from mothers who had been tortured by
watching their children slowly starve to death — pinched faces growing
paler, eyes more listless, heads drooping lower day by day until finally
they did not even ask for food. You saw a tiny thing playing on the
street suddenly run to a tree or fence and lean against it while he
coughed and had a hemorrhage. Others like him were dying of tuber-
culosis from lack of eggs, butter, and milk — so many cows had been
sent to France. Yet they came up to me and offered to sell their pre-

DO YE HEAR THE CHILDREN WEEPING? 283

scriptions thinking that I, as a foreigner, had money to buy them;
they themselves had none for these luxuries.

The old-fashioned warrior who entered with the sword and killed
his victims outright had "my respect after witnessing the "peace con-
ditions" of Germany.

The Quaker food stations admitted only children who were ill and
only mothers who were more than seven months pregnant or who
were nursing babies less than four months old. The spectacle of one of
these women bringing two or three of her brood, not sick enough to
be regularly fed, to share her own soup was too sad and overwhelm-
ing to bear. Those in charge of the distribution wanted each mother
herself to eat for the benefit of her unborn child or nursing infant, and
were already crowded to capacity, feeding three and four hundred at
a time on cocoa and rolls made from white flour. But they could not
bring themselves to exclude the little scarecrows with large, starry
eyes, pipestem legs, and hands from which the flesh had fallen until
they were like claws. On one of my visits the "sister" had them stand
up and then asked, "Where have you been?"

"To America," they chorused.

"What have you to say?"

"We love America. We thank America."

I did not instantly comprehend, but it was explained to me that
they called the station Amerika in token of their gratitude.

To account for the sorry state in which they found themselves the
Germans were groping to fix the blame either within their country or
on some foreign power. All seemed of the opinion that had the United
States not entered the War, none would have been victor and none
vanquished; this, they said, would have meant a lasting peace. Yet
they felt little animosity towards us. What there was had been largely
wiped out by the aid of the Hoover Commission. Furthermore, they
still hoped we might be an influence in loosening the Treaty chains
which kept them helpless and bound. When I asked them why they had
accepted the humiliating terms at Versailles of which they complained
so bitterly, they replied they had been told that, had they not done so,
vast territories which supposedly had been mined would have been
blown up and huge populations would have been annihilated.

284 MARGARET SANGER

The military party accused the Socialists of having stabbed them
in the back and brought about defeat through the leadership of such
pacifists as Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg, who had paid with
their lives ; the Socialists and workers regretted they had not united
with Russia and, combining their own scientific and technical knowl-
edge with her raw materials, conquered the world and thus molded
all civilization to their ideals.

Both classes sincerely believed that France wanted to destroy them
utterly. I saw something of the reason for their feeling one day when
a tram stopped to let off passengers, and a French automobile filled
with French officers, instead of halting the prescribed number of feet
away, plowed right through, knocking down two people and never
even pausing to see what havoc it had created. The spectators gazed at
the bodies lying there waiting for the ambulance. They did not dare
shake their fists, but anyone could tell from the pitch of their voices,
their expressions of passion and anger, how bitter was their resent-
ment.

The women broke down all the reserves of my emotion. They had
been at one time the most advanced in Europe, politically, economically,
and socially, and, although they had had to work harder at the gym-
nasiums than the men because higher marks had been required of them,
they had been really on a par. But now a frightful retrogression had
occurred. Working women had been forced down to a state beside the
lower animals ; they had become drudges in the fields in place of draft
horses. I saw one who could not have been past twenty-five carrying
a huge basket of vegetables strapped to her back, the weight of
which threw her forward so that I expected any minute to see her go
on all fours.

An impressive and tragic poster by Kathe Kollwitz was displayed on
various corners. It showed a woman with head thrown back, eyes
closed, arms crossed over breast, and was captioned simply, "Waiting."
The human figures you saw on the streets looked out of eyes dried by
suffering and deepened by hunger. They had no faith, no hope, no
philosophy ; they were resigned to love or hatred, peace or war, a living
death or a sudden end.

Throughout Europe, governments were clamoring for bigger popu-
lations; France was offering bonuses for large families. "Our babies

DO YE HEAR THE CHILDREN WEEPING? 285

are dying; give us more babies." Among European labor groups only
the syndicalists of France had recognized excessive population as det-
rimental to the working classes.

The deficiency in Germany of two million lives sacrificed in the War
had been made up by the thousands returned from Alsace-Lorraine,
from the former province of Posen, and the deportees from England,
France, and Italy. There were not nearly enough positions to go round.
Yet the nationalists, who had tried to cover the bitter pill of imperial-
istic ambitions with a sugar-coating of patriotism, still estimated the
world in terms of numerical greatness and women as mere machines
in the cradle competition of human production. Even the German So-
cialists, following in the footsteps of Marx, opposed Malthusianism
vigorously in and out of season.

A Neo-Malthusian congress had been held in Dresden in 1912, but
the movement then organized by Maria Stritt had practically gone out
of existence and its place taken by a more popular demand for the right
to abortion. For a single year the statistics of Berlin indicated that out
of forty-four thousand known pregnancies twenty-three thousand
were terminated by this means, though it was technically illegal.
Women were now campaigning for a bill before the Reichstag to per-
mit operations to be performed lawfully in hospitals, where fatalities
could be reduced by proper sanitary care. Not one of those with whom
I talked believed in abortion as a practice ; it was the principle for which
they were standing. They were resolved to have no more babies for
cannon fodder, nor until they could rear them properly.

Most of the doctors whom I interviewed said that what Germany
needed was children and lots of them. I asked one if the medical pro-
fession, as a whole, were doing anything to prevent entrance into the
world of those children whose backs were so weak that they could never
sit up straight, whose bones were too soft to hold the weight of their
bodies. He answered abruptly, "By aborting the mothers we are doing
our best to cope with conditions as we find them. It is not our work to
change them."

I was hounding everybody to learn the whereabouts of the contra-
ceptive formula for which I was searching, and was finally given the
name of a gynecologist who should know, if anybody did, where it
could be found. I made an appointment, and he greeted me in the most

286 MARGARET SANGER

cordial way. When I questioned him about the reported sterility of
German women, he agreed with the argument that, the situation being
what it was in the country, the population should be checked for the
next five years. "Here is a friend indeed," I said to myself.

I then gently brought up the subject of abortion. "Doesn't this seem
a ridiculous substitute for contraceptives?"

The doctor rose, his chest sticking out ; he buttoned his coat, bowed
formally, and inquired, "Where did you say you came from?"

"New York City."

"Are you sure you are not from France or Belgium ?"

"Certainly not."

"Nobody who has the welfare of Germany at heart could talk to me
as you have this morning. Only enemies could come here to give such
information to our women."

I wished he would sit down ; he made me nervous. But I went on.
"Why is it such an act of enmity to advocate contraceptives rather than
abortions ? Abortions, as you know yourself, may be quite dangerous,
whereas reliable contraceptives are harmless. Why do you oppose
them?"

To my horror he replied, "We will never give over the control of
our numbers to the women themselves. What, let them control the
future of the human race ? With abortions it is in our hands ; we make
the decisions, and they must come to us."

That was not the tone of this doctor alone but also that of most of
his confreres.

Thinking that Dr. Magnus Hirschfeld might know about the for-
mula, Havelock had given me a letter to him, and I presented it at the
Institute of Sex Psychology, where abnormalities were being studied
and treated. This most extraordinary mansion, bestowed by a prince
of Bavaria who had himself been cured of inversion by Dr. Hirschfeld,
was furnished sumptuously. On the walls of the stairway were pic-
tures of homosexuals — men decked out as women in huge hats, ear-
rings, and feminine make-up; also women in men's clothing and
toppers. Further up the steps were photographs of the same individuals
after they had been brought back to normality, some of them through
adaptation of the Voronoff experiments in the transplantation of sex

DO YE HEAR THE CHILDREN WEEPING? 287

glands. It was not a place I particularly liked, although I was interested
to see how a problem which had cropped up everywhere in the post-
War confusion was being attacked.

Dr. Hirschfeld wasNkind and gave me the address of a firm in
Dresden which he believed might be manufacturing the formula, so
off I went to that city. It was memorable for my meeting with Maria
Stritt, a darling little old lady, as quaint in her way as Dr. Vickery in
hers. This tiny aristocrat, like one of the dolls for which her city was
famous, had a fine vigorous mind, and spoke English with care and a
better choice of words than most Americans. Again I made the rounds
of the doctors and again found none concerned over birth control ; I
went to the address where the formula was supposed to be, only to be
directed on to Munich.

Munich, to me the most lovely city in Germany, seemed the most
prosperous of any I had visited. I noticed a difference immediately;
the streets were cleaner, the people less hungry-looking. There was
more food, more clothing in the shops, and much greater activity. It
had always been synonymous in my mind with music and Lieb-
fraumilch, and I was delighted to be asked to dine at a hotel which I
was told was the smartest and gayest in town. "Oh, we envy you. You'll
have dancing, you'll have wine, you'll have everything." But it turned
out to be a night club in the most blatant New York style, one table
elbowing another, the people — Germans, not tourists — dancing to last
year's jazz, the whole place shrieking nouveaux riches. This, too,
was part of post- War life.

Bavarian gemutlichkeit could not be altogether downed. On Satur-
days the trams were literally jammed with men and women, young
and old, who had put on their climbing clothes, donned their packs, and
here hieing themselves away to near-by resorts or to the hills. With
them went their guitars or accordions, and when the singing began
everybody knew all the words — no tum-de-tum-de-tum. If they did
not have their own instruments there was sure to be a wandering
musician to play, and the floors of every hostelry or open-air bier-
garten were literally filled with whirling, waltzing figures. Everyone
seemed able to enter into the folk dances, although to me they appeared
complicated — many steps, much precision, and a great deal of dignity.

288 MARGARET SANGER

Hunger and poverty existed in plenty, however, in the city. Hospi-
tals were lacking in the simplest and most ordinary articles — no soap,
no cod-liver oil, no rubber sheets, insufficient clean linen. Even the
babies had to lie all day in wet diapers, and consequently the poor
little waifs were a sad, miserable lot. Another tragic thing which gave
me nightmare for weeks was to see children's mouths covered with
running sores, because the sole available meat and milk came from
cattle suffering with hoof-and-mouth disease.

Here at Munich the "birth strike" was most violent. The former
medical chief of the Communists told me the women of Bavaria were
determined to stop having babies ; he himself had given information
to thousands and had intended to establish clinics all over the state had
the Communist Republic remained in power.

Only the preceding spring the Communist red flag had for three
weeks flown from the house tops of Munich. I met representatives
from both sides of the political arena. The middle- and upper-class
conservatives claimed the revolutionists had not been capable of man-
aging affairs, being good agitators but not good organizers — able to
start things but not knowing how to finish them. They had not given up
their guns ; money had been put aside and peasant costumes and boots
were ready for escape, because the existing bitterness made it likely the
struggle was not yet settled. Communist leaders, on the other hand,
claimed they had allowed their enemies to flee and then had been tricked
and fooled, and knew at last they could expect no quarter. Their ideals,
their faith in humanity, their consideration, had cost them their lives
and liberty, and they would not forget this valuable lesson.

At a meeting of the Communist Party I was introduced to Mrs.
Erich Muhsam who, with her husband and their friend Landau, had
gone to the front and distributed leaflets to call the boys back home.
Landau, a gentle soul who so believed in the goodness of man that he
had pleaded with the soldiers to be brothers and not to take life, had
been kicked and clubbed to death by the White Guard, which had after-
wards marched to the Muhsam apartment and, when they could not
find anybody there, had wrecked it with machine guns. Fortunately for
the Miihsams they were already in jail.

Though the Revolution was supposed to be over, Erich Muhsam
was still imprisoned. In every country during such upheavals thousands

DO YE HEAR THE CHILDREN WEEPING? 289

are cast into jail and, unless some other upheaval occurs to get them
out, they remain there ; many pacifists in the United States were not
freed until long after the Armistice.

In 1928 I saw Erich Muhsam — every inch a poet, an artistic and
delicate organism, almost helpless-looking. In 1935, under Nazi rule,
he was returned to a concentration camp — a hangover on the black list.

The account of his fellow prisoners ran something like this : One
afternoon he had been told to "report at headquarters and bring a
rope."

"Where can I find a rope?"

"I don't know. Get it !"

"They're going to kill you," he was warned as he started out, still
lacking a rope.

"Oh, it's just one of their jokes — a form of torture."

"You may be right ; you've scarcely lifted a voice."

But that evening his comrades discovered him dangling by the neck
from a beam. They said he could never have climbed up himself and
that, furthermore, he had been beaten to death before Jie had been
hung there.

Nevertheless, officially he had committed suicide.

I met in Germany probably a hundred thorough-going conserva-
tives and only one Muhsam, and yet he it was who stood out spectacu-
larly.

My own interests were keeping me busy enough. I finally found that
the formula I was seeking was made in Friedrichshaven, on Lake Con-
stance. I initiated a correspondence with the chemist, asking him to
come to Munich, and enclosing stamps to make sure of his reply. He
could not make the journey but, instead, invited me to Friedrichshaven.

All the passengers on dismounting at the station seemed to have
someone to meet them except myself. I noticed a smallish man with
what appeared to be bangs under his hat, front and back, standing on
the platform and holding a tight bunch of wild flowers wrapped up in
a newspaper, a matching one in the buttonhole of his coat, but as far
as I could see he was serving no special purpose there. I went to a
hotel, and in a very short while the little man himself arrived, having
identified me as the American lady he had come to greet. His quaint
bouquet was my welcome to Friedrichshaven.

29O MARGARET SANGER

The chemist, with his father and brothers, ran an unpretentious
factory which, in addition to other products, was making the contra-
ceptive in the form of a jelly. It had been put out before the War, then
dropped, and was now just starting up again and beginning to find a
market in Germany. He feared to let me go near his establishment,
suspicious that America might steal his formula. But he showed me a
picture of it, and gave me a few sample tubes, saying I could ob-
tain others from his sister, who was going to act as his agent in New
York. Thus was inaugurated a new phase in the movement — the use
of a chemical contraceptive.

I had letters of introduction to several people in Russia, and had
hoped to be able to go there, but I had commenced handing out my
extra dresses, underwear, stockings, shoes in Berlin ; my friends had
so little and were so generous that I could not endure it, arid now, in
the face of an approaching winter of hardship, without wardrobe and
no prospect of securing one or even sufficient food, I had to abandon
the Russian plan.

I had talked clinic, clinic, clinic while I was in England. Having
myself been convinced, I wanted the Neo-Malthusians also to believe
that it was a better way than advice through literature. A few of them
were assembling to meet me in the Netherlands, and thither I turned
my steps. As soon as the train north was over the border, cream was
brought and delicious fruit; the contrast between one side and the
other was too obviously brutal and awful. It almost made me ill to see
so many delicacies in the Dutch shop windows when children in Ger-
many were starving.

With the Drysdales, to Amsterdam came Dr. Norman Haire, Aus-
tralian born, a gynecologist who had settled in London, sensed the
public interest in birth control, informed himself thoroughly on the
subject, written a great deal about it, and become prominent in the
movement, advocating contraception from his Harley Street office.

As Dr. Haire and I went around visiting clinics we found that the
countless stores where contraceptives were sold had fitting rooms in
back with midwives in charge. They did not maintain the old Rutgers
standards. I was disappointed to see the deterioration which had taken
place since 191 5. During the reorganization period of Europe the
tendency, under Russian influence, was for young laborites to be in

DO YE HEAR THE CHILDREN WEEPING? 29 1

charge of things, and they aimed to turn out Dr. Rutgers and the Dutch
Neo-Malthusians and put clinics, which were dedicated to the work-
ers, on a strictly utilitarian basis. Here as elsewhere they could agitate
and tear apart but lacked executive ability. The new board, composed
mainly of laymen, did not realize that such technical knowledge and
experience was required as only a physician like Dr. Rutgers pos-
sessed. He was a sad and unhappy man, profoundly discouraged over
the odds against which he had to struggle.

Nonetheless, my English friends were converted to the idea of
clinics, and Bessie Drysdale and Dr. Haire planned to open one soon
in London.

Chapter Twenty-three

IN TIME WE ONLY CAN BEGIN

"Enough, 'tis the word of a Grand Bashaw;
You needn't to bother about the law.
He told me they wasn't to speak at all,
You don't need a warrant to clear a hall.
He told me to tell them to stir their stumps;
When 'Clubs!' is the order, then clubs is trumps.
What else would it be when I'm just a cop
And he is a Reverend Archbishop?"

ARTHUR GUITERMAN

IN confirming my conviction in 19 18, Judge Frederick E. Crane of
the Appellate Division of the Supreme Court of New York had
for the first time interpreted the section of the state law which per-
mitted a licensed physician to give contraceptive advice for the "cure
or prevention of disease" ; and, further, he had taken from Webster's
Dictionary the broad definition of disease as any alteration in the state
of body which caused or threatened pain and sickness, thus extending
the meaning of the word far beyond the original scope of syphilis and
gonorrhea. But, never satisfied, I wanted women to have birth control
for economic and social reasons. )

Therefore, in January, 1921, Anne Kennedy and I went to Albany
to find a sponsor for a bill which was to change the New York law.
It was not only a question of amending it, but also a means of edu-
cating the public, of explaining our cause through the medium of
legislation. Months of preparation were required, hours of tramp-
ing the floors of State buildings at Albany, interviewing one per-
son after another, securing promises of help, breaking down hostility.

When people said that women who would not have children were
selfish and preferred lap dogs, I replied, "All right. Then it is better

292

IN TIME WE ONLY CAN BEGIN 293

for the children not to be born." That type of woman should die
out biologically, just as did the different species that were caught in
the mire and slime and could not reproduce themselves. It is a
principle that applies to human beings also, that they must work
through their environment in order to survive.

As soon as you could get out of people's minds what birth control
was not, they almost invariably said, "Why, yes, certainly, that sounds
reasonable." Many of the lawmakers themselves believed that the
measure might be of great benefit, but the party whip cut too deeply.

Birth control was once described by Heywood Broun as dynamite
from the point of view of the politician. If he supported it, he might
lose votes ; if he opposed it, he might lose votes. "There is nothing a
politician hates more than losing votes. He would much rather the
subject never came up."

One assemblyman from Brooklyn at first agreed to introduce our
bill and then wrote, "I very much regret, but after consulting with some
of the leaders of the Assembly, I have been strongly advised not to
offer your bill. I am told it would do me an injury that I could not
overcome for some time." Another refused on the ground of "levity
from his associates." But a few years later we found a young,
courageous legislator who introduced a bill and secured hearings.
Although it was defeated, the atmosphere was clarified.

Mrs. Hepburn, who had been in the suffrage movement early and
had been one of the sponsors of Mrs. Pankhurst's tour of the United
States, now lived in Hartford, Connecticut. Although the mother of
six, including the actress, Katherine, she retained her youthful face
and figure, being almost like a sister to her children, playmate and
companion for them at tennis, golf, and swimming. Young men asked
her to dinner with the same pleasure that they asked her daughters.

Closely associated with her was Mrs. George H. Day, Sr., a grand-
mother in 192 1. She always came from Hartford for every Board
meeting of the\ League and, in turn, her house was a place of refuge
for poor, worn-down friends of causes. They could go there and be
ministered to by a staff of servants and come back, rested and re-
juvenated.

With two such seasoned campaigners to back us, we carried our
legislative activities into Connecticut, the only state where "to use a

294 MARGARET SANGER

contraceptive" was a crime — as though it were possible to have a
policeman in every home ! A mere six years had elapsed since the move-
ment had begun ; consequently, that we were now able to get a hearing
was in itself a triumph. Nevertheless, no easy task faced us ; so much
red tape had to be broken through. But here at Hartford we did suc-
ceed in finding an introducer who could hold his own under ridicule.
Then we had to educate him, feed him with facts — medical, social,
historical — so that he could defend his bill.

A young priest stood forth as our chief opponent, basing his ob-
jections on the laws of nature, which he claimed were contravened by
birth control. Fortunately the committee had a sense of humor. In my
ten-minute rebuttal I was able to answer the "against nature" argu-
ment as Francis Place had done a hundred years earlier. I turned
the priest's own words on himself by asking why he should counter-
act nature's decree of impaired vision by wearing eyeglasses, and
why, above all, was he celibate, thus outraging nature's primary de-
mand on the human species — to propagate its kind. The laughter
practically ended the "unnatural" thesis for some time.

In New Jersey another attempt was made. The law there allowed
doctors to give information for "a just cause," but they were fearful
of including minor ailments under this interpretation. The bill intro-
duced at Trenton had a hearing, but it also failed to pass.

The whole thing was nerve-wracking but was part of the experi-
ence we gained. And, furthermore, whenever we had hearings, the local
work progressed much more rapidly as a result. Nothing was lost,
however expensive the plowing and sowing. Apparent defeats were
victories in the long run.

It then seemed to me from glancing over current clippings and
publications that people all over the world were discussing birth con-
trol. The English Baron Dawson of Penn had been Court Physician to
Edward VII and had continued in this same post during the reign of
George V. But he had broader interests, too. One of the great events
in the history of the movement was his speech at the Church Congress
at Birmingham in answer to the doctrine promulgated by the Bishops
at Lambeth that sexual union should take place for the purpose of
procreation only :

IN TIME WE ONLY CAN BEGIN 295

Imagine a young married couple in love with each other being ex-
pected to occupy the same room and to abstain for two years. The
thing is preposterous. You might as well put water by the side of a
man suffering from thirst, and tell him not to drink it. Romance and
deliberate self-restraint do not to my mind rhyme very well together.
A touch of madness to begin with does no harm. Heaven knows life
sobers it soon enough.

His speech caused an immense sensation throughout England.
Headlines and streamers announced, "King's Physician asks Church
to sanction birth control." The deduction was that His Majesty was
endorsing it, and stolid Britishers were all agog at the idea that Buck-
ingham Palace was now talking about the subject ; it was hinted Queen
Mary was not overpleased.

On this side of the Atlantic Major General John J. O'Ryan, who
had commanded the Twenty-Seventh National Guard Division, lec-
tured on overpopulation as a cause for war. Frank Vanderlip, once
Assistant Secretary of the Treasury and later President of the Na-
tional City Bank, had just returned from Japan, proclaiming that
population must be controlled because some countries could no longer
feed themselves. Here was an army man on the one hand, and a finan-
cier on the other, unprimed, uncoerced, even uninvited, speaking out
of their independent experiences. They were voices in the wilderness,
oases in the desert, and certainly encouraging historical landmarks.

Among uneasy experts the sentiment was growing that population
pressure in Japan would soon create an inevitable explosion. Indeed,
one of the familiar arguments in the United States brought forward
against birth control was the "menace of the Yellow Peril," by which
was meant specifically, Japan. What folly to reduce our birth rate when
Orientals were multiplying so appallingly fast that the downfall of
Western civilization might soon be looked for ! India and China were
teeming indiscriminately, but their peoples were feeble, inert, and dis-
eased ; whereas the Japanese were being reared under German health
traditions, were ninety-seven percent literate, and were technically
equipped for battle.

Naturally I was eager to learn as much about this situation as possi-
ble, and welcomed the opportunity to meet the Nipponese friends of

296 MARGARET SANGER

Gertrude Boyle, who had married a gentleman of Japan. They always
appeared in pairs or groups of three, four, five at a time, talking busily
in asides with each other while I exchanged opinions with one. They
were helpful in furnishing me with unpublished facts ; the older, con-
servative, nationalist, militarist party advocated greater numbers, but
the young, liberal intellectuals, many of whom had attended Occidental
universities, could see the clouds already lowering on the horizon and
hoped the storm could be averted by controlled population growth.
Atro, a reporter on a New York Japanese paper, had been supplying
the last-named group, which in Tokyo called itself Kaizo, meaning
reconstruction, with clippings about birth control, and several of my
articles had been printed in their publication.

The women's point of view was graphically described to me by the
Baroness Shidzue Ishimoto, daughter of the head of the great Hirota
clan and wife of Baron Keikichi Ishimoto, a young nobleman who had
put in practice his ideals of service. This charming, youthful and gra-
cious matron, tall for her race and equally beautiful by our standards,
very smart in her American street costume, had in 191 9 come from her
own land where suffrage for women was still mentioned in awed tones.
She had studied our language at a Y.W.C.A. business school, and in
three months had performed the extraordinary accomplishment of
mastering it sufficiently to speak, write, and even take dictation in
English.

We quickly became friends and she at once foresaw the possibilities
of birth control in bringing Japanese women out of their long sup-
pression in the family system. She said she intended to form a league
immediately upon her arrival in Tokyo, and did so in 1921.

During that year also clinics were started in England. That of Marie
S topes proved popular, although instruction, given by a midwife, was
limited to mothers who had already had at least one child. Shortly
afterwards Dr. Haire and Bessie Drysdale, with Harold Cox as chair-
man of a lay group to finance the work, established Walworth Center,
which had a fine gynecological thoroughness and set an example which
later clinics in England followed.

It was high time clinics were started in the United States as well.
After the Crane decision I had anticipated that hospitals were going to
give contraceptive advice. But in 19 19, under Dr. Mary Halton's di-

IN TIME WE ONLY CAN BEGIN 297

rection, two women, the first with tuberculosis, the other with syphilis,
had been taken from one to another institution on Manhattan Island.
All had refused such information, although most had agreed that the
patients, if pregnant, could be aborted. The officers in charge had said
they were obliged to protect their charters, and the staff physicians
their licenses and reputations.

Anything depending on the organized medicine is hard to put
over; though individual doctors may break away, in the long run
most medical progress proceeds by group action.

Since the hospitals were laggard in this matter, I decided to open a
second clinic of my own. It was to be in effect a laboratory dealing in
human beings instead of mice, with every consideration for environ-
ment, personality, and background. I was going to suggest to women
that in the Twentieth Century they give themselves to science as
they had in the past given their lives to religion.

In addition to the usual rooms I planned to have a day nursery where
children could be kept amused and happy while the mothers were being
instructed. A properly chosen staff could enable us to have weekly ses-
sions on prenatal care and marital adjustment. Gynecologists were to
refer patients to hospitals if pregnancy jeopardized life; a specialist
was to advise women in overcoming sterility ; a consultant was to deal
with eugenics ; and, finally, since anxiety and fear of pregnancy were
often the psychological causes of ill health, a psychiatrist was to be
added. I intended, furthermore, that it should be a nucleus for research
on scientific methods of contraception; domestically manufactured
supplies of tested efficacy could not, at that time, be procured.

Because organized medical support was lacking, I tried to see what
could be done with individuals, writing to various doctors to inquire
whether they were willing to sponsor such an undertaking. Several
asked me what methods I was recommending, but Dr. Emmett
Holt, then the outstanding pediatrician of New York, whose book,
The Care and Feeding of Children, was the bible of thousands of
mothers, invited me to come to his office; before making any endorse-
ment he wanted to know more about it.

I packed up all my European supplies and showed them and ex-
plained them to Dr. Holt, who had called in also an obstetrician and a
neurologist, Dr. Frederick Peterson, for the discussion. The usual

298 MARGARET SANGER

attitude of the child specialist was, "Our living depends upon babies.
Why should we advocate limiting the supply ? The more the merrier.
If you cut down, you're taking our maintenance from us." But Dr.
Holt said, "A thoroughly reliable contraceptive would be a godsend
to us. If the family cannot afford a nurse we must rely on the health
and strength of the mother to keep her baby alive. If pregnancy can be
postponed for a few years, not only the baby who has been born, but
the baby who comes after is much more likely to survive."

Dr. Holt lent us his name, one of the first important physicians to
do so, thus setting an example which eventually others followed. Five
or six men and women doctors agreed to stand behind the clinic.

But I had to have more than verbal approval. Unless the clinic were
to be conducted by a doctor with a New York practicing license, it
would not be there to stay. In early autumn I brought together an
interested group to discuss the possibility of a location on the East
Side near Stuyvesant Square, and Dr. Lydia Allen de Vilbiss, whom
I had met at the Indianapolis social workers' conference, was going to
form her own medical committee behind her and build it up. On the
basis of her promise, I signed a year's lease for a small suite of rooms
at 317 East Tenth Street, from which a dentist had just moved out, ap-
propriately situated on the ground floor in a densely populated section.

The legislative activities and planning for a clinic had taken much
of my attention during the year, but the central theme was the de-
termination to hold the First National Birth Control Conference,
November n-13, 1921> at the Plaza Hotel in New York. I timed
it purposely to coincide with a meeting of the American Public Health
Association, hoping that if we could only convince these officials of
the need for birth control, they would use it in their own work.

In addition to the health aspect, we planned to treat of population
and also have a doctors' meeting on methods and technique. But
"flaming youth" was having its fling, and the great clamor of the
moment was directed towards the moral issue. Opponents were con-
stantly hurling the statement that immorality among young people
was to be the inevitable fruit of our efforts. This I did not believe. I
knew that neither morality nor immorality was an external factor in
human behavior; essentially these qualities grew and emerged from
within. If the youth of the post- War era were slipping away from

IN TIME WE ONLY CAN BEGIN 299

sanctioned codes, it was not the fault of birth control knowledge
any more than it was the fault of the automobile, which made
transportation to the bright lights of the city quick and easy. Im-
morality as a result should not be placed at the door of Messrs. Ford
or Chrysler.

In order to have a free and fair hearing we proposed a large open
meeting to wind up the Conference, and invited ministry and clergy
of all denominations, including Archbishop Patrick J. Hayes, who
was the spokesman of the Catholic Church in New York.

The movement was older in England and had already established
its dignity there. Consequently, the presence at the Conference of
such an outstanding Englishman as Harold Cox was certain to carry
weight. To persuade him to take the sea voyage I sailed for Europe.
When I arrived in London I found him unwell, and his doctors at
first refused him permission to travel. Under the circumstances it
was very fine of him to promise to come. J. O. P. Bland also said he
would look in on the Conference if only to give it his blessing. He was
a dark-haired, witty, amusing North-of-Irishman who had lived much
in the Orient and become an authority on Far Eastern matters, an
internationalist in all his thinking. He was one of those who always
helped- to hold up your right hand.

My object in England having been attained, I went on to Switzer-
land with a definite aim ; I had formed a habit in my nursing days,
when I was waiting in the night to give medicine or treatment to a
patient, of occupying the time putting down experiences and thoughts
that came to me. The same habit continued. After lectures, while I was
still sizzling with excitement, I often relieved the tenseness by writing
down answers to questions I feared I had not covered adequately. Be-
fore I knew it I had material gathered for a book, and even some chap-
ters in rough draft. They needed pulling together and polishing off
and I went to bed in Montreux for a month to do this. I had regarded
Woman and the New Race as my heart book ; this, The Pivot of Civi-
lization, was to be my head book. I brought it back with me to the
United States and Wells, who was reporting the Washington Disarm-
ament Conference for the New York World, wrote an introduction.

To make our Conference a success it had to be under the auspices
of an organization. I had always had a dread of them. I knew their

300 MARGARET SANGER

weaknesses and the stifling effect they could 'have. They seemed heavy
and ponderous, rigid, lifeless, and soulless, often caught in their own
mechanism to become dead wood, thus defeating the very purposes
for which they had initially been established. Even the women who
were able and clever at systematizing such bodies terrified me with
their rule-and-rote minds, their weight-and-measure tactics ; they ap-
peared so sure, so positive that I felt as if I were in the way of a giant
tractor which destroyed mercilessly as it went.

In spite of this dread I had reasoned out the necessity for an organi-
zation to tie up the loose ends. Although it might be limiting and in-
hibiting to the individual, it had other advantages of strength and
solidity which would enable it to function when the individual was
gone. Therefore I sent a questionnaire to leaders in social and pro-
fessional circles, asking them whether the time had not come for such
a national association ; the replies almost unanimously confirmed this
decision.

The evening before the Conference was to open, a few friends
gathered together to launch the American Birth Control League. Its
aims were to build up public opinion so that women should demand
instruction from doctors, to assemble the findings of scientists, to
remove hampering Federal statutes, to send out field workers into
those states where laws did not prevent clinics, to co-operate with
similar bodies in studying population problems, food supplies, world
peace. After the dinner, given at Mrs. George F. Rublee's home,
we talked over specific plans for the year and set in motion the
machinery for having the League incorporated.

Juliet Barrett Rublee had been one of the pioneers, a member of the
original Committee of One Hundred, and all the way through the
years she has never wavered from my side. No more inspired idealist
was ever initiated into a movement. The imagination of this pictur-
esque, romantic wife of a conservative lawyer had been so fired that
she dedicated to it her entire devotion, loyalty, partisanship. Others had
rallied their own personal friends around the idea, but Juliet's influence
brought in her husband's associates — the Cravaths, Morrows, La-
monts, Dodges, and Blisses.

Juliet's parties were always gay and interesting, with an atmosphere
nobody else could create. Her small, engaging dining room was as

IN TIME WE ONLY CAN BEGIN 3OI

colorful as she herself — the only woman I ever knew who dared to
wear bright greens, reds, yellows, all together. For lunches, teas, and
dinners in behalf of the cause she practically turned over her home in
Turtle Bay Gardens.

A goodly number attended the opening of our Conference, which,
appropriately, coincided with that of the great disarmament confer-
ence at Washington. The medical meeting, where contraceptive tech-
nique was discussed, was so crowded that latecomers could not squeeze
in. The doctors who did find places, each apparently surprised to see
his confreres there, expected us to have a hundred percent sound
methods ; they seemed disappointed because we had no magic up our
sleeves and told them quite frankly we had not. The best we could do
was show what devices were being employed, including those from the
Netherlands and. the preparation I had found at Friedrichshaven,
with the warning that they had not been tested for efficacy.

After two full days nothing remained but the Sunday evening mass
meeting on "Birth Control, Is It Moral?" For this we had selected
the Town Hall pn West Forty-third Street, a new club designed as a
forum for adult education; the auditorium was often used for discus-
sion of questions of civic interest. Harold Cox was to deliver the first
speech and I was to follow.

Always, when I am to speak, I attempt to visualize the hall and the
audience in order to feel my way into the subject. When I cannot do
so, I have invariably been met by blocked doors. Throughout Sunday,
try as I would to "tune in" to the approaching event, I could not do it.
I kept remembering a dream I had had the night before in which I was
carrying a small baby in my arms up a very steep hill and came rather
abruptly to a slope which became a mountain side of rock and slippery
shale ; I had nothing to grasp to prevent me from sliding. The baby
cried continually and I wanted to comfort it, but I dared not use my
right hand because it was held up like a balancing rod which saved us
both from falling. That miserable dream made me drowsy all day. My
brain seemed numb. I simply could not think of what I was going to
say.

Anne Kennedy had gone ahead to the Town Hall at about seven
o'clock. Harold Cox and I had dined at Juliet's but I could not eat ; I
was interested neither in the food nor the conversation. I still had an

302 MARGARET SANGER

absolute blank in front of me. Juliet was congratulating me that soon,
with the Conference over, I could have a rest. Ordinarily when I am
approaching the end of a particular job I begin to feel released, but this
time I could not reassure her ; I was nervous, anxious, and apprehen-
sive.

Our taxi swung into West Forty-third Street and crept cautiously
along through a swarming aggregation. "Heavens !" I said. "This is
an overflow with a vengeance."

We dismounted and pushed our way to the Town Hall doors. They
were closed and two policemen barred our path when Mr. Cox and I
attempted to enter. "This gentleman is one of the speakers and I am
another," I said. "Why can't we go in?"

"There ain't gonna be no meeting. That's all I can say."

I had not the faintest idea of what was happening. A newspaper
man standing near by suggested, "Why not call up Police Commis-
sioner Enright and see what the trouble is ?"

Juliet and I rushed across the street to a booth and she telephoned
police headquarters. No one could say where the Commissioner was.
As far as they knew no orders to forbid the meeting had been issued.

Then I put through a call for Mayor Hylan. While I was waiting
for the connection I kept my eyes on the Town Hall entrance and saw
that policemen were cautiously opening the doors to let out driblets of
people. If they could get out I could get in, so I abandoned the tele-
phone and wove my way through the throng until I reached the doors,
slipping in under the policemen's arms before they could stop me.
Dignified health officers from all over the country, lawyers and judges
with their families and guests were standing about, grumbling, vague,
reluctant to depart, wondering what to do.

I fairly flew up the aisle but halted in front of the footlights ; they
were as high as my head and another blue uniform was obstructing the
steps leading to the stage. Suddenly Lothrop Stoddard, the author, tall
and strong, seized me and literally tossed me up to the platform. A
messenger boy was aimlessly grasping flowers which were to be pre-
sented after my speech. Stoddard grabbed them briskly, handed them
to me, and shouted, "Here's Mrs. Sanger !"

"Don't leave !" I called to the audience. "We're going to hold the
meeting."

IN TIME WE ONLY CAN BEGIN 303

A great scramble began to get back into the seats. The hall was in a
turmoil ; the front doors had been stampeded and those in the street
were pressing in, only to find their places gone. The boxes and galleries
were soon filled, the stage was jammed, hundreds were crowded in the
rear. I cried, "Get in out of the aisles !" I knew the meeting could be
legally closed if they were blocked, and I did not want fire regulations
to be used as a pretext.

I still had no idea of what had gone on earlier when I commenced
my lecture, but had uttered no more than ten or twelve words when two
policemen loomed up beside me and said, "You can't talk here." A
thundering applause broke out as though it were the only relief for
angry, indignant, rebellious spirits.

"Why can't I ?"

I started again but my voice could not be heard. I then suggested to
Harold Cox, "Perhaps they'll let you speak. Try it." This white-haired
and pink-cheeked gentleman walked to the edge of the platform with
a dignity of bearing about as distantly removed from immorality as
could be imagined. "Ladies and gentlemen," he began, "I have come
from across the Atlantic — " but that was as far as he got before he
was led back to his seat by a policeman.

Then Mary Winsor, an ardent suffragette, sprang up, but they
stopped her also.^ As soon as one was downed, another jumped to his
or her feet. I did not know the names of some of the volunteers, who
were not even allowed to finish their "Ladies and gentlemen."

Meanwhile, Anne Kennedy was telling me as best she could what
had happened prior to my arrival. When the house had been half filled,
a man had come to the platform and asked, "Who's in charge?"

"I am," Anne had answered.

"This meeting must be closed."

"Why?"

"An indecent, immoral subject is to be discussed. It cannot be held."

"On what authority ? Are you from the police ?"

"No, I'm Monsignor Dineen, the Secretary of Archbishop Hayes."

"What right has he to interfere ?"

"He has the right." Here he turned to a policeman. "Captain,
speak up."

"Who are you ?" Anne had demanded.

304 MARGARET SANGER

"I'm Captain Donohue of this district. The meeting must be
stopped."

Capable and cool-headed Anne had replied, "Very well, we'll write
this down and I'll read it to the audience. T, Captain Thomas Donohue,
of the Twenty-sixth Precinct, at the order of Monsignor Joseph P.
Dineen, Secretary to Archbishop Patrick J. Hayes, have ordered this
meeting closed.' "

The listeners had sat petrified while she had read them this strange
admission. No hissing or booing then. They had just sat. It was one
thing to have the hall shut by a mistaken or misguided police captain ;
a very different thing to have it done by a high dignitary of the Roman
Catholic hierarchy.

Monsignor Dineen was now stationed in the back of the hall, and
Anne pointed him out to me, of medium size, in plain attire, calmly
directing the police by a casual nod of the head or a whisper to a man
who acted as runner between him and the Captain on the platform.

Confusion and tumult continued for at least an hour. Newspaper
men were scribbling stories ; those who could not get in were creating
commotion outside ; the reserves had been summoned. It was bedlam.
Miss Winsor tried to speak two or three times ; I, at least ten. But I
knew that I had to keep on until I was arrested in order that free speech
might be made the issue. To allow yourself to be sent home at the
order of the police was accepting the police point of view as to what
was moral. Moreover you were bound for the principle of the thing
to carry it into the court for a legal decision; if the pulpit and press
were denied you, you must take it to the dock.

Captain Donohue kept repeating to me, "Please get off this stage
before you cause disorder." Police now began to hustle the audience
towards half a dozen exits, and finally Miss Winsor and I were put
under arrest ; Robert McC. Marsh, Mrs. Delafield's son-in-law, offered
to act as our counsel.

Juliet said to an officer, "Why don't you arrest me too?"

"Well, you can come along if you like," he agreed. So we walked
together up Broadway to the station at West Forty-seventh Street,
policemen flanking us. The crowd, still jeering the reserves, who had
been trying vainly to clear the way, fell in line and marched behind us.
A patrol wagon then took us to night court where we were arraigned

IN TIME WE ONLY CAN BEGIN 305

before Magistrate McQuade. Someone had telephoned J.J. and he
came up later, but Mr. Marsh had already taken care of the necessary
formalities. We were released on our own recognizances, to appear at
court the following morning.

It was now some time after midnight, but we all went back to Juliet's
apartment. Harold Cox was shocked, not only by the roughness of the
police, but also by the supineness of the audience, which had done
nothing but make a noise. "Had this been in London, they would never
have been able to stop the meeting ! We would have defended our
rights, used every chair and door and window to barricade the place,
even though we might have been beaten in the end."

Anne Kennedy had brought the reporters, and they were waiting
for us. They wanted to make out a story of police stupidity and let it
go at that, unable to believe her when she told them it was the Arch-
bishop who was responsible. A Times reporter called up the "Power
House," as St. Patrick's Cathedral was colloquially termed, reached
Dineen himself , "and asked for verification. "Yes," said the Monsignor,
"we closed the meeting."

Then and there we decided to hold a second one as soon as possible
at the same place.

It was well on towards five o'clock when at last I fell in my bed. 1
sank to slumber, but it was only to find myself still carrying that
same baby up the steep and sliding mountain, balancing myself with
upraised hand. The sky was dark, the way unmarked. Wearily I
stumbled on.

Chapter Twenty-four

LAWS WERE LIKE COBWEBS

"And heard great argument,
About it and about; but evermore
Came out by the same door wherein I went.'

EDWARD FITZGERALD

. fff- t£tm fftm fff. tff* tft* fff.

\W xVV VW \SV.* VW \W TfcV*

PROMPTLY at nine the morning after the wretched Town Hall
affair Miss Winsor and I appeared before Magistrate Joseph E.
Corrigan and the case was dismissed in five minutes. Neither Mon-
signor Dineen nor Captain Donohue was in court. Here was a ridicu-
lous thing — the Catholic Church held such power in its hands that it
could issue orders to the police, dissolve an important gathering of
adult and intelligent men and women, and send them home as though
they were naughty children — and then not feel called upon to give any
accounting.

The papers expressed the greatest indignation. Even the most con-
servative were placed in the trying situation of defending birth control
advocates or endorsing a violation of the principle of free speech,
which "must always find defenders if democracy is to survive." It was
to be expected that the World would be up in arms, but the Times
carried a headline that Archbishop Hayes had closed the meeting, and
the Tribune was spurred on by the indignation of Mrs. Ogden Reid,
who had been present at the Town Hall.

Apparently the Church had not expected to render any explanation
whatsoever. Then, faced with a battery of reporters, Monsignor
Dineen made a statement :

The Archbishop had received an invitation from Mrs. Margaret
Sanger to attend the meeting, and I went as his representative. The
Archbishop is delighted and pleased at the action of the police, as am

306

LAWS WERE LIKE COBWEBS ^°7

I, because ... I think any one will admit that a meeting of that char-
acter is no place for growing children. . . . The presence of these
four children at least was a reason for police action.

He had not improved his position. The scoffing was redoubled when
it was learned that the four "children" were students of Professor
Raymond Moley's class in sociology at Columbia University; Mon-
signor Dineen had not seen beyond their bobbed hair.

Only a small section of the public had been aware of our modest little
conference; even fewer had known of the proposed Town Hall meet-
ing. Now the publicity was tremendous. Many Catholics themselves
condemned Church tactics, and Archbishop Hayes had to defend him-
self :

As a citizen and a churchman, deeply concerned with the moral
well-being of our -city, I feel it a public duty to protest ... in the
interest of thousands of . . . distressed mothers, who are alarmed
at the daring of the advocates of birth control in bringing out into an
open, unrestricted, free meeting a discussion of a subject that simple
prudence and decency, if not the spirit of the law, should keep within
the walls of a clinic. . . . The law was enacted under the police
power of the Legislature for the benefit of the morals and health of
the community. . . . The law of God and man, science, public policy,
human experience, are all condemnatory of birth control as preached
by a few irresponsible individuals.

The seventh child has been regarded traditionally with some peoples
as the most favored by nature. Benjamin Franklin was the fifteenth
child, John Wesley the eighteenth, Ignatius Loyola was the eighth,
Catherine of Siena, one of the greatest intellectual women who ever
lived, was the twenty-fourth. It has been suggested that one of the
reasons for the lack of genius in our day is that we are not getting the
ends of the families.

This statement appeared synchronously with our second meeting.
The Town Hall had been booked ahead for several weeks; conse-
quently, we had engaged the big Park Theater in Columbus Circle.
It was packed fifteen minutes after a single door was opened. Dr. Karl
Reiland of St. George's Church was a new recruit on the platform ;
otherwise our program was the same as before, and a balanced and
poised discussion proceeded without acrimony or excitement. Outside,
however, two thousand people were clamoring to get in, even climbing

308 MARGARET SANGER

up the fire escapes. Orators were haranguing from soapboxes, men
were pounding each other with their fists, Paulist fathers were selling
pamphlets against birth control.

In my open letter of reply to Archbishop Hayes I said :

I agree with the Archbishop that a clinic is the proper place to give
information on birth control. ... I wish, however, to point out the
fact that there are two sides to the subject under consideration — the
practical information as distinct from the theoretical discussion. The
latter rightly may be discussed on the public platform and in the press
as the Archbishop himself has taken the opportunity to do.

And then, citing Scripture :

If the Archbishop will recall his Bible history, he will find that
some of the more remarkable characters were the first children, and
often the only child as well. For instance, Isaac was an only child,
born after long years of preparation. Isaac's only children were twins
— Jacob, the father of all Israel, and Esau. Samuel, who judged
Israel for forty years, was an only child. John the Baptist was an only
child, and his parents were well along in years when he was born.

Archbishop Hayes delivered his final pronunciamento in his Christ-
mas Pastoral :

Children troop down from Heaven because God wills it. He alone
has the right to stay their coming, while He blesses at will some homes
with many, others with but few or with none at all. . . . Even though
some little angels in the flesh through moral, mental, or physical de-
formity of parents may appear to human eyes hideous, misshapen,
a blot on civilized society, we must not lose sight of this Christian
thought that under and within such visible malformation there lives
an immortal soul to be saved and glorified for all eternity among the
blessed in Heaven.

Heinous is the sin committed against the creative act of God, who
through the marriage contract invites man and woman to co-operate
with him in the propagation of the human family. To take life after
its inception is a horrible crime ; but to prevent human life that the
Creator is about to bring into being is satanic. In the first instance,
the body is killed, while the soul lives on ; in the latter, not only a body,
but an immortal soul is denied existence in time and in eternity. It
has been reserved to our day to see advocated shamelessly the legaliz-
ing of such a diabolical thing.

, LAWS WERE LIKE COBWEBS 309

A monstrous doctrine and one abhorrent to every civilized instinct,
that children, misshapen, deformed, hideous to the eye, either mentally
or constitutionally unequipped for life, should continue to be born in
the hope that Heaven might be filled !

General opinion was that controversy gave us free publicity, and
it did, column after column, but to my mind it was of the negative
kind. The truths falsified and motives aspersed had to be debated, cor-
rected, and argued away, and this took time from constructive work.
The press wanted to keep up the excitement and manufacture news, but
I did not. As a matter of fact the hullabaloo was usually done for me ;
the blundering of the opposition often saved my voice.

The correspondence through the press was dropped, but meanwhile
the American Civil Liberties Union, spurred on by Albert de Silver,
from whom we had previously sought advice and who had helped us
raise funds, had urged me to institute action for false arrest. This I
knew would be a fruitless task, but I did consent to the demand for an
investigation. Commissioner Enright was said to be out of the city,
but Chief Inspector Lahey, acting in his place, was to determine
whether charges should be preferred against Captain Donohue for
having stopped the meeting.

On December 2nd, in a small room closed to the press, Mr. Lahey sat
at the head of a long table. On his right was a chair to which I was
called. On his left, opposite me, was a heavy man with a big bulldog
head, wearing a black alpaca coat. He fixed his eyes straight on mine
as though he intended to hypnotize me and influence by sheer terror
what I was to say. His features were so set, his expression so immobile,
that I sensed animus. I refused to return his gaze but faced the In-
spector instead.

The interrogation, prompted by this sinister individual, who bent
over occasionally to murmur into Mr. Lahey's ear, held bitter malice.
Nevertheless, I answered every query as completely and as honestly as
I was able. I had nothing to hide, and still believed that my interlocutor
could arrive at no decision unless he heard the truth in its entirety. I
was all for telling it. ^

But never throughout any of the hearings could either the examiners
or police be kept to the point. They were not genuinely trying to find
out who had given the orders and why, but attempting to justify the

310 MARGARET SANGER

illegal proceedings ; and always they went off into vague irrelevancies
extraneous to the issue, such as trying to embarrass dignified, elderly
witnesses by asking, "What are you doing with birth control?"

Chiefly the investigation focused around the Brownsville clinic raid.
I denied emphatically that certain contraceptives for use by men only
had ever been there ; they were of a type which I did not recommend,
and had been brought in by the police themselves.

"Do you mean to say, Mrs. Sanger," went on Mr. Lahey, "that
this statement of the police officer as written into the records was
untrue?"

"I do."

Mr. Lahey lifted an official finger to an attendant. The door of the
anteroom opened and Mrs. Whitehurst, who had been the leader of
the raid, was dramatically framed before us.

"Do you say that if she," he waved to her, "made the statement re-
ferred to in the police records, she lied ?"

"She did," I affirmed. This was the first time in all my life that I
had ever called a person a liar. I felt as though I had stepped down into
the lower brackets of common decency, but the police are accustomed
to such words, and I had to meet the circumstances.

Mrs. Whitehurst was instantly dismissed. I, too, was dismissed, and
Juliet took my place. She had learned from her husband and other
lawyers how witnesses could protect themselves, and tossed off her
answers readily, now and then returning, "I don't know," and, fre-
quently, "I don't remember." The black-coated gentleman who had
hoped to trip her up but was getting nowhere, became exasperated and
said roughly to Mr. Lahey, "Oh, stop this ! Ask her if she's read the
law."

Juliet admitted she had read Section 1 142, but, to further question-
ing, replied she did not recall when, she had not read it in my presence,
she might or might not have talked it over with me.

Mr. Lahey rose and left the room. Then the Unknown shouted to
a young Irishman who had been busily taking notes, "Arrest that
woman !"

We could not have been more astonished if a thunderbolt had struck
the place. For a few seconds, which seemed longer, everyone was

LAWS WERE LIKE COBWEBS 3II

paralyzed. At last Mr. Marsh asked, "On what grounds is Mrs. Rublee
arrested ?"

"She has violated Sectiqn 1 142."

"She said she had read the law — is that a crime ?"

No answer.

Mr. Marsh then inquired, "On whose authority is Mrs. Rublee ar-
rested?"

Dead silence. No reply while the Unknown and the stenographer
muttered together. Finally, when Mr. Marsh repeated the question, the
latter replied, "I do. I arrest her on my own authority. Patrolman
Thomas J. Murphy."

Mr. Marsh said to the Unknown, "It's customary for brothers of
the law to give each other their names. Mine is Robert Marsh, practic-
ing attorney. May I not know with whom I am speaking ?"

"I'm just a bystander."

"Well, Mr. Bystander, won't you instruct the police officer to be
more explicit in his statement of facts ?"

"Look here, Marsh, I'm telling you the officer is arresting this wit-
ness on his own initiative."

He, too, left the room.

Juliet, Mr. Marsh, and I entered her car and young Stenographer-
Patrolman Murphy, obviously ill at ease, sat beside the chauffeur. At
the Elizabeth Street Court, Magistrate Peter A. Hatting smiled cheer-
fully at us from behind his desk, "Well, where's the prisoner ?"

Murphy made a feeble gesture in Juliet's direction and said in a
whisper which we could overhear, "It's a birth control case."

"Oh, I see. Well, what was she selling — where are the articles ?"

Murphy could produce none.

"Well, well, where is the evidence ?"

Murphy looked even more embarrassed, mumbled that he didn't
have any.

"Well, the court is adjourned anyway, and we'll have to wait until
this afternoon."

I was turning my back on Murphy, very cross at him, but Juliet
asked him to lunch with us. "He didn't want to arrest me, did you,
Mr. Murphy ?" And Mr. Murphy shook his head most decidedly.

312 MARGARET SANGER

While we ate, he explained that our Unknown was Assistant Cor-
poration Counsel Martin W. Dolphin, with offices in the Police De-
partment, that he himself was Mr. Dolphin's private secretary, that he
had been brought to the inquiry merely to take dictation, that he had
been only ten months on the force, that he had never arrested anybody
before, and that when Mr. Dolphin had said to arrest Mrs. Rublee he
had protested, "Why, I can't arrest her. I haven't seen her do anything
to be arrested for !"

"I'm awfully sorry," he went on, addressing Juliet, "but I had to
obey orders. If I didn't, I'd be in an awful mess. Gee, why didn't they
get some of the old fellows down there to do it ?"

When we returned to court, Assistant District Attorney Wilson
said to Magistrate Hatting, "Your Honor, I have no evidence in this
case. The police have furnished nothing to the District Attorney's
office. If I have not sufficient evidence by three-thirty I'll dismiss the
whole thing."

Then we waited. Eventually the expected "minutes and statement"
arrived. Murphy swore that they were true — to Juliet's wholehearted
disgust. Her faith in human nature had been betrayed ; she did not
see why he preferred to keep his job rather than his self-respect. Magis-
trate Hatting seemed anxious to make everybody comfortable — Juliet,
the Catholics, the police, and the public — and to convey the impression
nobody was really to blame.

Since the wife of a prominent lawyer had become involved, people
in high places in New York had an obligation to protect their own.
Publicity had been great before ; now it was multiplied tenfold. A letter
was addressed to Mayor Hylan :

The action of the Police Department . . . constitutes such a wilful
violation of the right of free speech as to cause grave alarm to the
citizens of New York, who have a right to know why such outrages
have taken place, what motives and influences are behind them, and
whether any conspiracy exists in the Police Department to deny the
right of free speech and the equal protection of the law to citizens of
New York. This obviously is a matter of the gravest concern.

We, therefore, ask an immediate and full investigation to be fol-
lowed, if the evidence warrants, by such disciplinary measures against
the officials found to be guilty as will discourage similar offenses here-
after.

LAWS WERE LIKE COBWEBS 313

This demand was signed by Henry Morgenthau, Sr., Herbert L.
Satterlee, Paul D. Cravath, Lewis L. Delafield, Charles C. Burling-
ham, Samuel H. Ordway, Pierre Jay, Paul M. Warburg, Charles
Strauss, Montgomery Hare.

As a result, Mayor Hylan delegated David F. Hirshfield, Commis-
sioner of Accounts, to supervise an investigation into the previous
investigation. The first session was diverted into a discussion of the
merits of birth control. The Commissioner was facetious, and, when
Mr. Marsh kept after him for interrupting witnesses and getting off
the subject, finally said he had been insulted and refused to continue
as long as Mr. Marsh represented us.

At the three subsequent hearings Emory R. Buckner took charge
of our interests. Dolphin, although summoned, did not appear at any
of them. Captain Donohue testified that Desk Lieutenant Joseph
Courtney had received the information over the telephone, and had
passed it on to him. So far as he knew it was the telephone operator
who had given the orders to close the meeting. But he would, he said,
have done so anyhow.

"What law did Mrs. Sanger violate?" asked Mr. Buckner.

"She was disorderly. I requested her several times to leave the
platform and she defied me and said she would not do it. She caused
quite a commotion and people were all hollering and yelling, a general
commotion."

"You think it was a crime for her to commence to speak after a
Captain of Police had told her not to ?"

"Yes."

"Was Miss Winsor also arrested because she attempted to speak
after being told to keep quiet ?"

"She said she knew a woman who had nine children and the audi-
ence commenced to holler and try to pull the policemen off the stage."

Even the Commissioner was becoming annoyed at Donohue's in-
anities. He said to Mr. Buckner, "You do not have to put any witnesses
on to show the intelligence and the lack of sight or foresight of the
Captain. You and I, I think, will agree on that point." And then he
turned to Donohue. "Now, Captain, will you tell me the reason for
acting in the Hall as you did to prevent that meeting ? You see, I do not
know whether you understand me or not. You policemen, you do not

314 MARGARET SANGER

usually understand ordinary language. I want to know what was in
your mind ; why did you act as you did, that is all."

"Because I had orders to do so." But he would not admit they came
from any further back than the Desk Lieutenant.

Officer Murphy was put on the stand next, and the Commissioner
gave him a chance to explain what had prompted him to make the ar-
rest. "I figured this way. If it would be a crime to run such a meeting
or hold such a meeting in the City of New York according to the Penal
Law, if Mrs. Rublee was an assistant with Mrs. Sanger or anybody
else in running such a meeting, and there were distributed circulars re-
garding prevention of conception, Mrs. Rublee was just as much
responsible for the distribution of these circulars as anybody else."

"The circulars stated there would be a public mass meeting at Town
Hall on birth control," said Mr. Buckner promptly. "Is that a crime?"

The Commissioner interrupted. "Mr. Buckner, you do not expect
this young man to be interested in that. He is too young to know about
birth control. The old, bald-headed ones are the only ones that are
interested in it."

And late in the afternoon he said, "I am too busy and have too much
work to do, so we won't have any summing up."

At the concluding session Desk Lieutenant Courtney disclaimed all
liability, saying the only order given to Captain Donohue was to take
a number of policemen to the meeting and see that the law was not
violated; thereafter the Captain had acted on his own responsibility.

As far as I was concerned the final scene in the farce took place be-
fore the elderly and firm Judge John W. Goff, one of the official
referees of the Supreme Court who was to hear the charges before the
New York Bar Association as to whether Dolphin should be disbarred.
He was summoned again in vain until Judge Goff said angrily, "Unless
he comes within the hour, I'll subpoena him," and at last, still in his
alpaca coat, he put in an appearance. I was on the stand almost an
entire afternoon during which the attorney representing Dolphin was
attacking me personally instead of inquiring into Juliet's arrest.

"Do you know Carlo Tresca ?"

"Yes."

"Do you know Alexander Berkman?"

''Yes."

LAWS WERE LIKE COBWEBS 315

I could now see what was coming ; radicals were always made the
whipping boys and, in lieu of specific charges, any acquaintance with
them was made to seem incriminating.

"Do you know Emma Goldman?" Here the attorney's voice rose
in outrage, and he looked at Judge Goff as though to say, "There
you have it."

"Yes," I reiterated, "but I also know Mrs. Andrew Carnegie and
Mr. John D. Rockefeller, Jr. My social relations are with people of
varying ideas and opinions."

The next attempt was a subtle sort of third degree, aiming to con-
fuse me and imply I was an inaccurate witness. "What was the precise
time you entered the room where Mrs. Rublee was arrested ? How large
was it? How long, how wide, how high, how many windows were
there ? Who was called first ? Where were you sitting ? How far was
Inspector Lahey from your chair ? Were you second, third, or fourth
on the right side or left side? How wide was the table, how long?
Where was the door located relative to the table?"

Usually I could not have remembered one such immaterial and un-
necessary detail. But that afternoon I was given second sight. I could
visualize the room ; my mind seemed to be projected into it so that
every particular stood out with the utmost clarity. It was an excellent
lesson to me ; thereafter I observed much more carefully.

After hours of this cross-examination I was physically exhausted,
as though I had been flung back and forth, beaten and pounded from
the bottom of my feet to the top of my head. I almost looked at my
arms to see whether they were black and blue, they ached so.

It was all useless. The police went unreprimanded, Donohue was
promoted when things had quieted down, and Dolphin, though Judge
Goff recommended prosecution and the Court of Appeals stated that
his conduct was "arbitrary and unlawful," was not disbarred because
he had not been acting in an official capacity when he had ordered the
arrest. In spite of the inconvenience, the humiliation of halls closed,
covenants broken — exactly nothing happened.

Chapter Twenty-five

ALIEN STARS ARISE

IN the summer of 192 1 I had signed a contract with the Kaizo
group, which had arranged a series of lectures in Japan by four
speakers : Albert Einstein was to explain relativity, Bertrand Russell
the consequences of the Peace of Versailles, H. G. Wells his version
of international accord, and I was to discuss population control, de-
livering in March and April eight to ten lectures of five hours each.
The five-hour clause I innocently believed to be merely a mistake on
the part of the translator, but I had faith in the common sense of
human nature and expected the error to be taken care of when I
arrived.

January and February were months of feverish activity. I spoke in
city after city — Boston, Baltimore, Philadelphia, and elsewhere —
rushing back to New York to Town Hall hearings and farewell
luncheons and dinners. The prolongation of the Town Hall episode
had been entirely unforeseen. If bookings had not already been made
requiring my departure in February, I should have postponed the
trip. But I had promised, and lecture dates were binding obligations.

Stuart was at Peddie Institute where my brother Bob had gone, cap-
tain of his football team, preparing for college, having a full and rich
time. Grant was there also but he was barely thirteen ; I could not bear
to put the broad Pacific between us. The headmaster warned me that
he was only beginning to adjust himself to the school and his studies,
and would be set back at least a year if I took him with me. I agreed
to reconsider, but I am afraid I had made up my mind beforehand.

3I(5

ALIEN STARS ARISE 317

With scant ceremony and scarcely enough clean shirts, I bundled him
up and away, leaving the turbulence of New York behind.

Since Grant was to travel on my passport, I had to have it renewed,
and had telegraphed Washington for it to be sent to the West Coast
where the detail of a visa could also be attended to. At San Francisco
it was waiting. With the little book and Grant in tow I presented my-
self to the Japanese Consul. Instead of stamping it as the usual mere
formality, he examined it carefully and then, apologizing profusely,
regretted very much that the Japanese Imperial Government could
not give me a visa.

Here was a state of things. I asked him whether he could find out
the precise reasons. Was it that I as a person could not go there, or
was my subject taboo? The next day, after a cable to Tokyo and
much polite bowing, he notified me it was both. In varying degrees
of amusement and indignation the papers published the fact that the
Japanese were turning the tables on the United States; by our Ex-
clusion Act we had implied they were undesirable citizens, and now
it was an American who was undesirable to them.

The steamship company would not sell me tickets on the Taiyo
Maru without the visa. Two days previous to her sailing a Japanese
who had been in the United States for the Washington Conference
proffered a letter of introduction. He deplored the action of his Gov-
ernment and was desirous of being helpful. "The Taiyo Maru is go-
ing on to Shanghai. Why don't you get a Chinese visa ?"

I always chose to go forward, and there was always a chance that
a way might open. A hundred and fifty Japanese who had been at the
conference — delegates, professors, doctors, members of the diplo-
matic corps, secretaries — were returning by this same vessel. Once on
board I could meet them simply and informally, and I was sure I
could convince them I was not dangerous. The Chinese Consul granted
a visa without question, our tickets were delivered, we sailed on the
Taiyo Maru.

I had never before been on a Japanese liner. The segregation
between whites and Orientals horrified me. Here were the aristocrats
of a people by nature intelligent, well-bred, well-clothed, inclined to
be friendly, taking Grant under their wing, and teaching us both,
amid much laughter, to eat with chopsticks. They had made valiant

318 MARGARET SANGER

efforts to adapt themselves to Occidentalism; they had altered their
dress and fashion of eating — substituting coats, collars, shoes for
loose kimonos and soft felt slippers, forks and knives for chopsticks ;
they sat on chairs instead of kneeling comfortably on the floor. Yet
my compatriots kept themselves aloof. Never did I see the two groups
together in conversation; they joined only in sports.

At night members of the crew wrestled in the moonlight, and I
gazed down at their deck, marveling at the grips, the holds, the stout-
ness of legs, the strength of backs and arms, the quickness of action,
the primitive, guttural calls of the umpires. Others of the crew
stamped their feet and, for good luck, threw pinches of salt towards
their respective champions.

Two days out the Japanese asked me to address them. I willingly
complied, and the dining room was closed off for the purpose. Ad-
miral Baron Kato, who was later to be Prime Minister, and headed
the delegation, talked to me afterwards. He had the culture, courtesy,
restraint, and suavity of a true gentleman, rather than the mien of the
war lord his title seemed to imply.

Equally genial was Masanao Hanihara, then Vice Minister of
Foreign Affairs and destined to be Ambassador to the United States.
He knew American ways and manners, or mannerisms, if you wish
to name them so ; he was understanding, and perhaps one of the most
fluent of the Japanese I met in the ease of his English. He told me his
people were not likely to accept the idea of birth control as a social
philosophy, though they were bound to accept the economic aspects,
and all the young would be interested as individuals.

Not until later did I learn how happily my contact with these two
gentlemen had resulted. They had separately cabled their Government
asking that I be allowed to lecture in Japan.

At Honolulu I had one short afternoon into which to crowd so
much. With leisliung about my neck I was whisked off for lunch to a
magical house at Waikiki, then to a big meeting. What surprised and
pleased me most was the complete absence of race prejudice. I looked
out over faces, mostly American but with a liberal sprinkling of
Chinese and Japanese in their native costumes and Hawaiians in
bright Mother Hubbards. Honolulu was the only place I had found
where, class for class, internationalism did exist.

ALIEN STARS ARISE 319

Two Japanese correspondents followed my zigzag trail, notebooks
in hand, pencils working furiously. They even inserted questions as I
was swept towards the boat where, breathless and almost in a daze,
we were garlanded once more. They had a scoop and were going to
cable their favorable impressions to their papers in Japan.

Their efforts had definitely produced a favorable reaction on board
ship. Individuals and delegations of Japanese came into my stateroom
at any time — morning, afternoon, or evening — "to be informed."
Although they did not knock, this was not considered an invasion of
privacy, provided they bowed profoundly on their way in ; on entering
and on leaving they bowed and bowed, again and again. They seemed
to know more about my affairs and my children than I did myself,
mentioning things I had completely forgotten, even reminding me of
my unspoken thoughts of long ago.

Past experience had taught me that when a despotic and arbitrary
screen was interposed between birth control and the people, the desire
for knowledge was immeasurably enhanced. This was particularly
true in Japan, where the recent renaissance had quickened the public
mind. At the announcement I could not land, officialdom was sub-
jected to frank criticism.

A little, round-faced boy called me each morning, murmuring
something in a voice so soft and melodious it almost lulled me back
to sleep. With the coffee, which tended to wake me, he announced,
"Madam Sanger go in maybe. Yes, Japanese Government let her go
in." In ten minutes he would return with the reversal of this news.
He was aware of the contents of the radiograms which kept the
aerials crackling even before they had been delivered to me. One
read, "Thousands disciples welcome you." Another, "Possible land
Yokohama; impossible discourse." From the ship's daily I learned
first that I might lecture, but not publicly; and then, a day later, after
continuous derision on the part of the press — all right, I might talk
publicly if I wished, but under no condition on birth control. The
last word I received was that I could land but speak only in private.
From the Ishimotos came the message, "Anticipate your staying
with us."

March ioth was so dripping and foggy that when we reached
Tokyo Bay I could not see Japan. The arrival of the Taiyo Maru

320 MARGARET SANGER

bearing such an array of distinguished passengers as the conference
delegates was bound to call forth unusual activity. A veritable flotilla
met the ship — police and health officers' launches, mail tenders and
press dispatch carriers. Two officials came on board to interrogate
me, and the three of us retired to my cabin, where our bags had been
hopefully packed. I showed my passport, told the purpose of my visit,
explained how I happened to know the Ishimotos and Mr. Yamanoto
of the Kaizo group. Inspector and interpreter alike smiled amiably as
they plied their questions, ending with the polite query, "Who is pay-
ing your expenses?" The implication was that I might be a secret
agent sent by the United States Government to deplete the population
of Japan and to prepare the way for an American invasion. This
was particularly amusing, since I was one of the persons thoroughly
disapproved of by my Government.

At the end of the lengthy catechism it was agreed that the ban
would be removed if I, for my part, agreed not to lecture publicly
on birth control, and provided the American Consul General Skid-
more formally requested permission for me to land. I had sent him
a wireless message from the Taiyo Maru saying I would like to visit
the country, if not as a lecturer at least as a private citizen, and asking
him to use his influence. Though I had had no reply I sent off a tele-
gram to him immediately, and Grant and I sat down on the luggage to
await developments.

The two officials had no sooner taken their departure than the little
cabin was filled to bursting with the gentlemen of the press. We
started and blinked with each rapid-fire, flashlight explosion. The
room was literally smoking with the acrid powder, and not an inch
of standing room remained. Seventy were all trying to get in at once ;
whatever I said had to be relayed and translated to the unsuccessful
ones who brimmed over into the corridor.

Meanwhile, we had docked at Yokohama and, when the reporters
were finally disposed of, my friends, who had been patiently enduring
the rain, greeted me — Mr. Yamanoto, Mr. Wilson of the British Em-
bassy, Baroness Ishimoto, and "the missionary who lived next door."
After welcoming me they left, the last named carrying with him my
briefcase laden with my most private papers and pamphlets, which I
did not wish seized at the Customs.

ALIEN STARS ARISE 32 1

Now came the tapping of clogs along the passage, and in the door-
way were framed slight, doll-like figures, pale white faces, crimson
lips, black glossy hair beautifully coiffured, butterfly-looking obis.
The trials of the day vanished before their bobbing little bows. Here
was a Japanese fairy tale come true.

In precise English the leader introduced the others ; this one repre-
sented the silk manufacturers, that one the weavers; each of the
twenty-five was appearing for some laboring organization. She ex-
plained they had been there all day, but it was nothing — they were so
proud to be the first to welcome the herald of freedom for women.
The Industrial Revolution which had put them to work was still so
young that they were in virtual slavery. Yet, she said, they were so
accustomed to subservience that it would be a long time until they
learned to rebel against their wrongs. Suffrage was slow — Japanese
women found it difficult to see its advantages. They could not be
stirred by offers of economic independence ; it was a higher ideal to
have husbands take care of their wives than have them battle for
themselves. She was certain no inspiration was to be found in that
quarter.

Then, with eyes sparkling, she added, "But when the message of
birth control came to us from Honolulu, like the lightning we under-
stood its meaning, and now we are all awakened."

We were served with tea, and I continued to await a reply from
Mr. Skidmore, but none ever came. Finally, at seven-thirty, due to
the British Mr. Wilson's intercession, the Imperial Government at
last opened its gates to me without the sponsorship of my own Gov-
ernment.

I still had to go through Customs. Papers and books, including
forty copies of Family Limitation, were confiscated. Thereafter I
usually left spaces in my diaries instead of writing out names, because
I never knew who was going to see them.

The Customs men further minutely examined my clothes, acces-
sories, even necklaces and ornaments, holding them up, laughing at
them, calling each other to come and look, in order to inform them-
selves as much on the composition and design as to determine whether
they were dutiable. The data they gleaned thus from incoming travel-
ers they stored away like squirrels — and cheaply-manufactured rep-

322 MARGARET SANGER

licas shortly appeared on Woolworth counters, stamped in purple
ink, "Made in Japan."

When I emerged, tired and damp, more crowds pressed around
seeking autographs. Everywhere in Japan people wanted your signa-
ture. One man, who spoke some English, said he represented the
Ricksha-men's Union and apologized for the trouble to which I had
been put. "Sometime Japanese Government he little autocratic." For
that matter everybody apologized for the Government.

After the torrents of rain, logs blazing in fireplaces warmed us in
the Ishimotos' charming house at Tokyo. Grant and I were both in a
large room, almost bare of furnishings, exquisite in its simplicity.
The fragile walls of painted silk gave an impression of airiness.

Next to us was the huge bathroom, the floor and lower walls of
burnished, shining copper. In the center, raised on legs, stood a great
wooden tub with a top that closed down, and a hole for your neck.
Five or six basins were ranged around the room and, beside each,
brush and soap. You were supposed to scrub and scrub and then rinse
by throwing pans of water over you. Finally you entered the steaming
tub to relax. It was not etiquette to leave any trace of soap in the
bath or any evidence of its use, because everybody in the family
soaked in that water before the night was over — guests, hosts, and
servants in order.

I sank gratefully on one of the mattresses borrowed for our com-
fort and laid on the floor ; the rest of the household slept on mats with
wooden blocks in place of pillows, a custom which allowed the ladies
to keep their coiffures intact for a week at a time. Through the frail
partitions we could hear the servants laughing and chatting until
late into the night, men and women together, carrying on their bath-
ing as though it were a function of eating.

Our days were tremendously busy, beginning early with the ring-
ing of the antiquated telephone on the wall. People came silently in
rickshas and departed after conversing with the Baron and Baroness.

Old Japan had extended esthetics into the realm of ordinary exist-
ence, and undoubtedly had produced a thing of beauty. The gestures of
ceremony might have meant little, but they made delightful the ar-
ranging of any affair whatever. The Japanese always greeted each
other with a bow from the waistline, hands gliding down to the knees.

9 ALIEN STARS ARISE 323

The difference between one and another was so subtle that a foreigner
could hardly distinguish it, but it was there all the same. A particular
mark of respect was the triple bow, graduated according to the social
rank — an inclination, a slight pause, a deeper inclination, again a
pause, and then down further until the back was nearly horizontal.

Grant, who was very affectionate, had been accustomed to kiss me
when we met, whether it were in a restaurant, hotel, on the street,
or anywhere else for that matter. But he had to forego this salute in
Japan when we observed that kissing was a shock to Japanese sensi-
bilities, and, indeed, was considered immoral. Instead, he took over
Japanese manners and became marvelously courteous. Practically
every time he spoke to me he made the three bows, and unconsciously
I soon found myself returning them with equal formality.

Politeness in behavior, impersonal and ritualistic, was most notice-
able in those relationships where we naturally expected habitual and
conventional reserve to be thrown aside. When the Baroness Ishi-
moto's mother and sister were coming for lunch, she donned a special
kimono, set out special vases and screens, greeted them with the pre-
scribed bows, wordings, and gestures. Even I noticed the civilities
accorded the two were not the same. The effect was that the mother
occupied the place of honor as though she were receiving.

Men came also to the Ishimotos' to plan for the various meetings
and entertainments. A member of the House of Lords telephoned to
say he was a "disciple." The press sought interviews. Early in my
career I had realized the importance of giving clear, concise, and
true concepts of birth control to those who wished to quote me. This
simple policy served my purpose particularly well in the Orient, where
technical phrases in English were hopelessly confusing. Under any
circumstances our language was peculiarly difficult for the Japanese,
and their phraseology was sometimes convulsingly funny. One letter
from a dismissed government employee to the head of his department
was making the rounds of Occidentals in the East :

Kind Sir, on opening this epistle you will behold the work of a de-
jobbed person, and a very bewifed and much childrenized gentleman,
who was violently dejobbed in a twinkling by your goodself. For
Heaven's sake, sir, consider this catastrophe as falling on your own
head, and remind yourself on walking home at the moon's end to

324 MARGARET SANGER

savage wife and sixteen voracious children with your pocket filled
with non-existent pennies and pity my horrible state. When being de-
jobbed and proceeding with a heart and intestines filled with misery
in this den of doom, myself did greedily contemplate culpable homi-
cide, but Him who protected Daniel (poet) safe through the Lion's
den will protect his servant in this home of evil. As to reason given
by yourself esquire for my dejobment the incrimination was laziness.

NO SIR. It were impossible that myself who has pitched sixteen
infant children into this vale of tears can have a lazy atom in his
mortal frame, and a sudden departure of eleven pounds has left me
on the verge of the abyss of destitution and despair.

I hope this vision of horror will enrich your dreams this night and
good Angel will meet and pulverize your heart of nether millstone
so that you will awaken and with such alacrity as may be compatible
with your personal safety, and will hasten to rejobulate your servant.

So mote it be, Amen,

Yours despair fully,

Akono Subusu

And on the bottom of the letter the district officer had noted :

Gentle Reader, do not sob —
Akono Subusu has been re jobbed.

I myself had a letter from a gentleman who wrote, "How I am
unavoidably in need to execute your 'Ism' and hope to know your
effective method."

Had it been allowed, I should have given forth practical informa-
tion. Since it was not, I believed if I could make plain to the author-
ities that I was not going to break this rule in my lectures, they could
find no fault with them.

Accordingly, the morning of our second day in Tokyo an appoint-
ment was made with the Police Governor. In spite of the early hour
the hard little official, his close-cropped hair revealing all the bumps
and developments, served us tea. The Japanese always handed you
tea as we pass cigarettes — in embarrassment, for relaxation, or just
to tie up loose moments. Disregarding the vital subject completely we
discussed current topics through an interpreter. Though all the people
were intensely serious, they were remarkably fond of plays on words.
Merrily I was told my name had created much confusion owing to its
similarity to sangai san, which meant "destructive to production."

- ALIEN STARS ARISE 325

Birth control was thus delicately introduced. For the first time I
heard about the Dangerous Thought Law, which had been sponsored
in Parliament by a group called the "Thought Controllers," who
aimed to exclude from the country all ideas not conforming to ancient
Japanese tradition. The Police Governor assumed he knew exactly
what I had planned to talk about, and I could not move him from the
conviction that I wanted to present a Dangerous Thought.

I was not, however, going to let the matter drop. I went higher up
to the Home Affairs Office. A courteous gentleman informed me the
Minister sent his regards and hoped to have the pleasure of seeing me
some other time. There was no tea. I was politely bowed out.

My next stop was at the Kaizo office, where the entire staff was
called into consultation. They were bristly and burly enough to be
taken for Russians ; only their kimonos identified them as Japanese.
One and all decided we should go in person to the Imperial Diet.
There, on presentation of our cards, couriers started running around
to find the Chief. In a few moments the door of the room into which
we had been ushered was opened, and in came the very same man
with whom I had conversed at the Home Office that morning. Pro-
foundly embarrassed I explained this was the way of impatient Amer-
icans, who were bent on hurrying things along. He was very kind,
and said he had been on the point of giving me permission to speak
publicly provided I did not mention birth control. When I sketched
an outline of a possible population lecture we laughed and agreed the
Empire of Japan was not, as a result, going to fall.

Almost from the time of landing I had been deeply conscious that
I was in one of the most thickly populated countries of the world.
The Ishimotos' automobile honked, honked, at every turn of the
wheels to squeeze through rickshas, pedestrians, and children in the
narrow, unpaved streets.

In any traffic danger the first concern was always for the baby. I
never saw one slapped, struck, scolded, or punished. I never heard one
cry; they all seemed happy and smiling, though I must admit a few of
them needed to have their little noses wiped. I could not believe any
country could contain so many babies. Fathers carried them in their
arms; mothers carried them in a sort of shawl; children carried
babies; even babies carried smaller babies. I saw a land of one-story

326 MARGARET SANGER

houses but of two-story children. Boys with babies on their backs
were playing baseball, running to bases, the heads of the babies wob-
bling so that you thought their necks were surely going to be broken.

The momentum that had come from the high birth rate was felt
in every walk of life. Peers, business and professional men were all
having large families. One told me he wanted twenty children. When
I asked him how many he had already he replied, "Two," and he
was offended when I suggested that perhaps his wife, instead of him-
self, had had those.

The density of population in tillable areas of Japan averaged two
thousand human beings to the square mile, and it was increasing at
the rate of almost a million a year. Although they built terraced rice
paddies on their hillsides with tremendous labor they could not feed
themselves. Furthermore, lacking ore, petroleum, and an adequate
supply of coal, they could not develop their industries to a point where
they could exchange their products for enough food.

The Government should itself have been disseminating contracep-
tive information, but the army faction was not friendly to it and
claimed Japan could never be respected in the eyes of the world until
she possessed a force sufficiently powerful to make might right. It
was even then too late for birth control to offset the inevitability of
her overflowing her borders; the population pressure was bound to
cause an explosion in spite of the safety valve of Korea. How long
this could be delayed was a matter of pure conjecture.

Chapter Twenty-six

THE EAST IS BLOSSOMING

*J2v *JJv *m *^)v w? w/ wJ w? wJ vJy v»v vJy vJv vK* vK* vK* vK* Cw (w vK* w (w vw CK* vw vK*

A FTER I found out where I stood with the Government, the silent
X~\. friends who had come and gone so frequently from the Ishimoto
home produced plans for various meetings. In each one the address
was to a particular class which did not mingle with others — commer-
cial, educational, medical, parliamentary.

The Kaizo group were intensely disappointed that I could not de-
liver the lectures I had prepared and for which they had invited me
to Japan. As a compromise we agreed that I should have to focus
my War and Population talk around Germany and the Allies. It was
going to be difficult, because I was not satisfied with the European
facts and figures I had.

My first meeting was at the Tokyo Y.M.C.A. Shortly before one
o'clock I was escorted with great ceremony into a room behind the
auditorium, pungent with smoke from a charcoal stove. Then I was
presented to a gathering of about five hundred — prosperous-looking
men, well-dressed women, students, a number of foreigners, a Bud-
dhist priest or two, and a liberal sprinkling of the Metropolitan Police
to make certain my audience thought no dangerous thoughts as a
result of my speech.

Most of the auditors apparently understood some English, because
while I was speaking they leaned forward attentively, laughing in the
proper places, but when I paused for the translation they relaxed,
rustled papers, and whispered to each other.

I had discovered that the five-hour clause in my contract was no

327

32B MARGARET SANGER

mistake and no joke. Standing from one until six was a frightful
strain. The lecture with interpretations took three hours, although I
could have delivered it in one, and questions took two more. Many
of these were on subjects entirely alien to my own. "What do you
think of missionaries ? What do you think of Christianity ? Are you
yourself a Christian?" This last was naively posed, and, thoroughly
aware of the significance of what it meant truly to be a Christian, I
replied, "I'm afraid I'm not a very good one."

My questioner put out his chest and said confidently, "I am."

I seemed to recall my adolescence when I had exacted the last ounce
of righteousness from every breathing hour. Many of the Japanese
converts had this spirit. They were trying to change their ancestral
ideas of morality and, instead, adopt wholesale the Christian code
without having had time to assimilate it.

The most painful experience I had in Japan was in addressing the
Tokyo medical association. The volunteer interpreter was a young
doctor who had been on a three weeks' tour of America, and his com-
mand of English was correspondingly slight. From the attitude of
the audience I could tell whenever he was not conveying my meaning
as I had intended it, though I did not always know what specifically
was wrong. The Baroness, unable to bear his mis-translation of
"prevention of conception" as abortion, which she knew would dis-
tress me intensely, finally rose and attempted to correct the erroneous
impression he was giving. But the meeting was over before she could
make it clear.,

Nothing had been said about remuneration. I expected none. But
the next day an army of ten rickshas appeared. The officers of the
society, laden with packages and bundles, presented themselves. One
by one they offered boxes in which I found an elaborate kimono, an
embroidered table cover, a purse, a fan, a cloisonne jar, and, in con-
clusion, the President offered me the smallest package of all, wrapped
in tissue and tied with a paper tape on which were the characters wish-
ing me health, happiness, and longevity. Opening it I found crisp new
bills in payment. This delicate gesture was typically Japanese.

At other meetings we usually sat on clean, fresh mats ; the room
might be chilly, but a little charcoal burner was beside you and occa-
sionally you warmed your hands over it. I liked the service and the

THE EAST IS BLOSSOMING 329

food which the maids silently brought all at once on a tray, covered
over and steaming hot. After sake in diminutive porcelain cups the
group was ready to converse, and it was cozy and interesting. Often
we did not get away until midnight because, although the discussion
was carried on in English, each remark was translated for the benefit
of those who did not understand. The Baroness always went with me,
and it was a revelation to them to have one of their own country-
women present.

I had heard much talk of the Elder Statesmen, but nobody at the
Peers' Club, where I gave an afternoon address, seemed to be even
elderly. They were curious to know why women were divorced,
whether they wanted more than one husband, whether they really
could ever care for more than one man, the nature of their love for
children, how long it could continue. They were like Europeans in the
frankness with which they regarded the relationship of the sexes. Yet
they were not satisfied with the accepted Japanese tradition — on the
one hand geisha girls who played and coquetted and amused them,
and on the other wives whose place as yet was definitely in the home.
They asked, "Is it not true that the American woman can be all things
to her husband — his companion, mother of his children, mistress,
business manager, and friend?"

I agreed with them that this was the ideal, but had to confess that
by no means every American wife fitted into this picture.

Many of the Japanese had themselves forgotten that in the heroic
and epic days women had enjoyed freedom and equality with men.
Only with the rise of the powerful military lords in the Eighth Cen-
tury had this most rigid, most persistent, and most immovable dis-
crimination arisen.

The Ona Daigaku, the feudal moral code, counseled :

A woman shall get up early in the morning and go to bed late in
the evening. She must never take a nap in the daytime. She shall be
industrious at sewing, weaving, spinning, and embroidery. She shall
not take much tea or wine. She shall not visit places of amusement,
such as theaters or musicals. She must never get angry — she must
bear everything and always be careful and timid.

The resultant upper-class Japanese lady, exquisite and decorative,
was a living work of art particularly created by the imagination of

330 MARGARET SANGER

numberless generations of men. My original conception of all Jap-
anese women had been fashioned out of romantic fallacies — partly
by the three little maids from school who simpered through the
Mikado, and to no small extent by the gaudy theatricalism of Mad-
ama Butterfly. The unrestrained exoticism of Pierre Loti and Laf-
cadio Hearn had strengthened my illusions, as had also the color
prints that had aroused so much enthusiasm towards the end of the
century.

But I soon found the cherry blossom fairyland was being de-
stroyed by the advent of machinery. In Yokohama and Kobe you
heard factory whistles and saw tall smokestacks, new shipyards, and
great steel cranes. The Industrial Revolution, accomplished in our
Western countries gradually, had invaded the Island Empire with an
impact and a shock the repercussions of which were still evident. It
had not brought freedom to the women whose low status was admira-
bly suited to the purpose of manufacturing with its ever-increasing
demand for cheap and unskilled labor.

Practically half the female population, some thirteen millions, were
engaged in gainful occupation though few were economically inde-
pendent. In the mill districts mothers scolded their small daughters by
threatening, "I'll sell you to the weavers." These kaiko, or "bought
ones," served as apprentices generally from three to five years. Mod-
ern Japanese industrialism had been able to take advantage of an
ancient Oriental habit of thought which placed slight value on the girl
child.

I spent half a day as the guest of the Kanegafuchi plant, the largest
cotton mill in the Empire and the ideal industrial institution which
was to be a model for others, comparing favorably with one of our
best. But Kanegafuchi was the exception. On the average, employees
in other mills worked a twelve-hour shift, day and night, amid the
deafening roar of relentless power engines. Dust and fine particles
of fabric fell like minute snowflakes upon them. Their growth was
stunted, their resistance to infection and malignant disease broken
down. In a silk-spinning mill at Nagoya conditions were only slightly
better. I found over seven hundred girls, some no more than ten
years of age, swiftly twirling off the slender threads from the co-
coons and catching them on the spindles. They were pathetic, gentle,

THE EAST IS BLOSSOMING 33 1

homeless little things, imprisoned in rooms with all windows closed
to keep them moist and hot. A quarter of their seven dollars a month
wages had to go for board.

Only by the graciousness and charity, in a sense, of the upper
classes were the household servants saved from institutions. When
the Baroness, for example, had married, some of them — cooks,
maids, and nurses — had stayed with her parents, some had gone to
another sister, some had come to her and been set to training the new
ones. With her they had a home for life. This system accounted in
part, at least, for the fact there were no beggars or mendicants in
Japan.

Essentially conservative, essentially the product of a strange and
scarcely understood past, the Japanese woman in my opinion did not
possess in her typical psychology any strong leanings towards rebel-
lion. This was true even among the many women writers on papers
and magazines. Those who interviewed me were intelligent, but I
was constantly amazed at their ancient and domesticated outlook.

I did not believe the woman of Japan would discard her beautiful
costume or sacrifice her esthetic sense upon the altar of Occidental
progress and materialism. The kimono was her chrysalis. Outwardly
it was often of some thick serviceable goods, dull brown or black,
shot through with threads of purple or blue. Yet underneath were
silks of the brightest and most flaming hues, formalized for each par-
ticular occasion. Only a fleeting glimpse was caught of these as she
walked. They were symbolic of her present position in society.

From the lowest serving maid to the finest aristocrat, certain in-
delible traits immediately impressed themselves. First of all was the
low, soft, fluttering voice, like art and music combined. They were too
modestly shy to talk out loud ; you could scarcely hear them in a small
room. Perhaps one reason men did not take their opinions seriously
was because they did not speak up. I heard on every side of the New
Woman — but I never saw her. Only those who had turned Christian
showed any signs of thinking independently. To be a Christian
seemed to imply being a rebel or radical of some kind. They told me
it with great secret pride.

This was the single place where I had found men rather than
women responding to the potentialities of birth control. The former

332 MARGARET SANGER

wanted to learn and thereby make of themselves something better.
They were more and more in touch with the ideas of .the Western
world, and were broadening themselves through travel.] I was con-
fident a shifting environment was going to extend the masculine point
of view and, if birth control could be proved of benefit to them, they
would practice it. At that time I did not agree that East and West
could never meet.

Japan was undoubtedly a man's country. Wherever we went, Grant
was Exhibit A. He was a tall, dark, rather gawky youth, with ado-
lescent manners but always cheerful. In private houses butlers and
maids paid him much attention, and, in hotels, as soon as we entered
the dining room everybody, because he was a man child, rushed to
anticipate his wishes, to see that he was made comfortable. I straggled
on behind. At our first appearance in one of these, the little girls who
were being trained as waitresses and whose duty it was to bow the
guests in and out were obviously confused. When we were seated at
the table the proprietor apologized, "You must excuse them because
they are so young, and they have their minds too much on this young
gentleman."

The Yoshiwara, to which some missionaries escorted me, was cer-
tainly an integral part of this man's world. First we visited the un-
licensed quarter, winding in our rickshas among alley-like streets lined
with small houses. The dark eyes of the girls peered out through slits
in the screen walls. Working men were standing in the muddy road-
ways, chattering, scrutinizing the prices which were posted in front
like restaurant menus — so much per hour, so much per night. A door
opened to admit a visitor. The light in the lower story vanished and
soon another twinkled upstairs; or a light went out above and re-
appeared below, the door opened again and a figure emerged. Hun-
dreds of lights behind paper windows seemed to flicker on and off
constantly, low to high, high to low. The sordidness, the innumerable,
shining eyes made me shiver involuntarily.

After we crossed a bridge to the licensed quarter the scene changed
immediately. The wide thoroughfare, with a row of trees down the
center festooned with electric globes like a midway, was clean and
inviting. The amply-built houses had an air of spaciousness and lux-
ury, their lanterns sent out a soft, alluring gleam, and carefully culti-

THE EAST IS BLOSSOMING 333

vated gardens produced a profusion of flowers in the courtyards.
This part of the Yoshiwara appeared a delightful place. Its attraction
for the girls was obvious ; they would rather seek a livelihood in this
fashion than in the dismal factories. Nor was it odd that they
should find more romance here with many men than drudging for
one all their days as the "incompetents" they became after marriage
under the domination of their mothers-in-law.

Through portals as broad as driveways the patrons, much better
dressed than those in the unlicensed quarter, strolled up to view the
photographs of the inmates, posted like those in the lobby of a
Broadway theater. In some frames was only the announcement,

" just arrived, straight from . No time for picture." The

clients did a great deal of "window shopping." Newcomers from the
country might have eight or nine visitors an evening, an older one
but two or three. Many of the girls came from good families, fre-
quently to lift their fathers or brothers out of debt. They sent their
earnings back and, as soon as they had accumulated a sufficiency,
often went home, married, and became reputable members of society.

But in spite of the Yoshiwara's artificial glamour, the crowd of men
swarming like insects, automatically reacting to the stimulus of in-
stinct, was unutterably depressing.

We walked home at midnight through the sleeping city, mysterious
and quiet, not like a city at all — no jumping signs or illumination,
but more like a nice, low-ceilinged room trimmed with old, brown-
stained oak, and only here and there a glow.

Nothing else in my travels could compare with that month in
Tokyo. The language was strange and unfamiliar. The bells in the
shafts of the rickshas, ringing for pedestrians to get out of the way,
added a bizarre note. The queer, clicking sound of the wooden geta
was different although somewhat reminiscent of the clop, clop, of the
Lancashire wooden shoes, which also were taken off at the door and
exchanged for slippers. All the smells and the sights were quite new,
even the signs on the shops were unreadable. In Europe, you could
usually guess from some root word what kind of merchandise was
for sale within. But not so in Japan. One day I stopped, totally puz-
zled, to inquire the whereabouts of a store the address of which had
been written down for me. I showed my slip of paper but nobody

334 MARGARET SANGER

there could help me. I went on. Fully three minutes later the pattering
of hurried steps behind me caused me to turn. Here was one of the
clerks. He had gone to the trouble of looking up the address I had
asked for and had come to act as guide to make sure I arrived.

Throughout Japan the custom of greeting you and seeing you off
was touching, and gave you a charming remembrance of a world
where friendships were worth time and consideration. When a Tokyo
doctor heard I was leaving Yokohama eighteen miles away at eight
o'clock in the morning, he presented himself at seven to bring me a
box of choice silk handkerchiefs. He must have risen at five to do so.

From the window of the train for Kyoto the faces of the old men
trudging along the road looked curiously like the drawings of them.
Everywhere were small village houses and, since I could see through
from front to rear, I wondered where the peasants and their numer-
ous offspring ate and slept.

The former capital was fascinating. The shopkeepers appeared to
esteem their visitors more highly than the goods they had to sell,
though Kyoto blue and, more especially, Kyoto red were like no
other colors anywhere. If ever you see the latter, buy it if you can,
cherish it among your treasures, save it for your children, because it
is the most beautiful of all reds.

It was now April, the festival of spring and of the geishas, the jeal-
ously guarded and chaperoned entertainers, singers, players. Every-
body was anticipating the flowering of the cherry trees, and with the
rest of Kyoto I went to see the enormous, spreading, willow cherry,
then in dazzling white blossom. It was several hundred years old,
its limbs which grew out and drooped towards the ground were
propped up with care, and around it was a superbly groomed land-
scape garden. The proprietors of hotels near such trees erected un-
pretentious tea houses, temporary in character, where hundreds of
people kept vigil. You could not help having respect for a people
whose love of a tree brought them from miles away and who waited
day and night throughout the duration of its brief blooming. They
paid deference to it as they did to a great artist who they knew could
live just so long.

The Japanese designed their gardens with the mood of the individ-
ual in mind. Some were filled with music, water, birds, activity, and

THfe EAST IS BLOSSOMING 335

there you could go to be cheered when gloomy and despondent. As
soon as I entered the Golden Temple grounds its influence fell upon
me. Everything was planned for thought and concentration. No
color, no noise, no rushing of water, no singing birds distracted the
attention. Only at certain hours could you even walk about, because
movement was disturbing to meditation.

Japanese hospitality reached its finest flower in Kyoto, and the su-
preme day of entertainment was offered by a generous and consid-
erate doctor. On inviting me to luncheon he said he would call with
his car at ten in the morning. This seemed a bit early, but it appeared
he wanted me first to visit the Museum of Art. Here was no wander-
ing through miles of rooms so that the eye was wearied and no last-
ing impression was gathered. Instead, I was shown only the one most
prized specimen of paintings, porcelains, and rare screens. After-
wards, I was ushered into the library to see a collection of precious
manuscripts, then back through the city for a few especially renowned
views, and finally at noon to the doctor's home. His wife and two
daughters greeted me and I was introduced to the guests. Little short-
legged trays were put before our floor cushions, and we all picked up
our chopsticks. I envied Grant his dexterity.

After the trays had been removed, we conversed until the business
men had to return to their offices. But a fresh group of guests took
their places, and with them appeared a painter. An easel was set up
and each of us in turn made a single brush line on the rice paper —
some straight, some curved, some vertical, some horizontal, criss-
crossing each other in every direction. Then the artist took his
brush and, amid exclamations of wonder and appreciation, with a
few expert strokes converted the melange into a flower pattern, a lake,
or a mountain.

An hour or so of this pleasure and the easel was swished away,
the painter vanished with his colors, and a sculptor was substituted.
We were now supplied with dabs of clay which we began to mold,
the sculptor going from one to another to give assistance. If you were
clever, as several of the Japanese were, works of art resulted. I
created a plain jug with handle and lip, was taught how to draw a
design upon it and how to paint it. Next day it was delivered to me,
baked and glazed.

336 MARGARET SANGER

Later we were escorted to the garden where we congregated be-
neath an open tea house perched high on a rock. There the younger
daughter tended a tiny- fire and brewed a ceremonial tea — no simple
brew, but leaves of a special sort, beaten until the beverage was bright
green. When we had enjoyed this delight we strolled about, admir-
ing the brooklets, the dwarf pines, the shrubs, the iris in bloom.

We returned to the house to find, as though in a play, that the
scenery had all been changed. Different screens were up, fresh flow-
ers in the vases, the women of the household in more elaborate cos-
tumes, and new visitors waiting. Grant and I alone seemed to remain
static.

Now on the immaculate matted floor appeared little charcoal stoves.
The evening meal was served by the mother and daughters as a
marked honor to their guests. This time I was brought a spoon and
fork; apparently I had not been very deft at lunch in handling my
chopsticks. After dinner came yet more people and yet more conver-
sation. I had been talking steadily since early morning, the topic be-
ing selected according to the type of gathering. In the evening it was
population, and more serious. Sometimes I forgot myself and spun
out involved English phrases, then, realizing they had missed fire,
had to go back and choose key words more easily comprehended.

This continued until midnight or later. At last we had to excuse
ourselves and ask to be taken home, because we were leaving for
Kobe the next morning.

The doctor and his wife, accompanied by some of their friends,
were at our hotel betimes, all with boxes and bon voyages. This re-
versal of the Occidental custom of bestowing presents on one's host
or hostess was an enchanting way of conducting the amenities of life.
They wanted no return for their hospitality. I had arrived in Japan
with one small trunk and departed with five, laden with gifts.

Chapter Twenty-seven

ANCIENTS OF THE EARTH

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NEW and different places, strange countries, peoples, and faces
have always appealed to me. I did not have to be in London
for the Fifth International Conference until July. When I had se-
cured my Chinese visa it had occurred to me that it might be much
better to go on around the world than retrace my steps.

On a misty day, the sun not bright enough to clear the sky com-
pletely, we sailed from Kobe through the glorious Inland Sea, threaded
its innumerable islets, like the Thousand Islands of the St. Lawrence,
only more delicate. The boat was small and out-of-date. A few of the
English had chairs but Grant and I wandered between crates of ducks,
chickens, and livestock, and hundreds of Japanese squatting stolidly
on the deck. When we emerged into the Yellow Sea it became very
foggy and Grant was sick to his toes. I put on a brave face and ate,
though with long teeth, as the old phrase goes.

We landed at Fusan one evening. Koreans stood about in their
white robes which fell to their ankles, pale figures outlined against
the night in the subdued light of their mysterious paper lanterns. The
next morning as I glanced out over the countryside on the way to
Seoul it appeared an Oriental desert, odd but seemingly familiar. I
felt at home within its gates. White-robed coolies smoking long thin
pipes with minute bowls drove oxen, worked in the fields. They had
North American Indian faces, uncut, ragged hair, reddish skins, and

337

338 MARGARET SANGER

curious, wooden structures strapped to their backs to carry burdens of
any kind — soil, coal, rocks.

The streets of Seoul were broad, dimly lit. The tall Korean men
were unique, a combination of priest, patriarch, and grandee, so
formal and elegant with their pointed beards a trifle larger than Van
Dykes. They were utterly indifferent to other people, managing to
preserve a proud and aloof air in spite of their idiotic, silly-looking
hats, dinky-crowned and wide-brimmed, from which hung strings of
amber beads, valuable family heirlooms.

I wondered again at the universal white costumes. Everywhere on
the banks of rivers women were eternally pounding laundry; you
could almost feel the threads parting company with the terrific beat-
ing— washing with stones and ironing with sticks.

The Korean was held in contempt by the Japanese, who declared
his Government had built schools, roads, railroads, brought cleanli-
ness. It was true that the houses of the Koreans were not so well-
kept, their habits not so sanitary, but they were a separate race, and
they accepted scouring and scrubbing and sweeping only under pres-
sure. Hatred and rebellion had been the result of denying them their
language and customs. They claimed they were taxed out of existence
to pay for such luxuries, and nourished antagonism and stubborn
resistance against anything Japanese. They maintained further that
they had no personal liberty, even being required to have passports
to move about in their own country.

Koreans also resented the speeding up of production in the silk
factories through the exploitation of little girls. I saw them there,
shoulders bent, crouched up over their work, hair braided down their
backs ; they were almost like babies. Their job was to put their tender,
delicate fingers into boiling water to pull out the silk cocoons — the
hands of older people were not sensitive enough. But the Japanese
said they did not feel the pain.

Even though I had a large luncheon meeting attended by foreign
missionaries and officials, Korea was but a stepping stone to China.
The Celestial Kingdom had an indefinable odor of its own, peculiar
and inimitable, which waxed and waned, varying with each city and
with each district of a city. It might be a compound of sauces, onions,

ANCIENTS OF THE EARTH 339

garlic, incense, opium, and charcoal, but who has ever succeeded in
putting an odor into words ? It marched upon you, at first faintly and
indistinctly like a distant army, and then closed in relentlessly, associat-
ing itself with memories, making you gasp in protest or pleasure.

At Peking I wanted to change into fresh clothes all the time. I was
haunted by dust — dust in my body, in my ears, up my nose, down
my throat, between my teeth. Some of the streets were paved, but the
dust was suffocating. After every sight-seeing sortie I bathed and
bathed and bathed in a desperate effort to rid myself of the diabolical
dust.

We were seven days viewing palaces, native quarters, night life,
sing-song girls, hospitals, factories, silk mills. We heard the mechan-
ical chanting and beating of drums by Buddhist priests, mostly young
boys dressed in soiled yellow robes; gazed with amazement at the
funeral processions — great floats, fantastic gods, food, flowers, pos-
sessions; visited old Chinese gardens and museums. I shopped for
jade and lapis lazuli and was well cheated.

Beggars, many of them crippled and on crutches, were hobbling
along in the gutters or sitting on corners, gaunt and filthy. Children
were turning handsprings, doing anything to attract your attention;
they edged beside you, and you had the feeling they had been born
with palms upward.

You could not set foot out of doors without being besieged by
ricksha boys clothed only in scant, cotton trousers and jackets, al-
ways short at ankles and wrists. The moment you stepped in they
picked up the shafts of their little vehicles and began the dogtrot
journey. I could not become accustomed to the eager running of
these half-naked creatures, so weak, so underfed, so much less able
than the rest of us. It had been bad enough in Japan, but there you
felt the runners were sturdy; in China they usually were suffering
from varicose veins, heart disease, and, forever, hunger. Often, as
the wind blew some of the rags and tatters aside, I saw pock marks
and wondered how close we were to the manifold diseases of the
Orient.

I was going about a good deal and it worried me to be pulled
around by a human being so emaciated. One morning our regular boy

340 MARGARET SANGER

was missing. Another replaced him, cheery and smiling. Three days
later the first returned. He had been sick, he said ; he had had small-
pox. The scabs had not yet peeled off.

I spoke to the doorman at the hotel, whp managed the rickshas.
"This boy is not well enough to work."

"Oh, yes, he's used to it. He feels a little bad, but he's all right."

Nevertheless, I sent him home to rest up. Nothing save famine and
pestilence and plague seemed to give the Chinese any breathing spell.
It was said the average ricksha coolie lasted but four or five years —
the remainder of his life he merely subsisted. I was submerged in a
strange despondency and questioned "the oldest civilization in the
world" which still, after so many thousand years, permitted this bar-
barism.

Grant rode a donkey when we went to the Ming tombs, and the
guide did also. I was carried in a chair for miles and miles through an
arid, dusty plain. Two coolies held the lengthy bamboo poles on their
shoulders and a third jogged alongside waiting to take his turn. I
felt so sorry for^them I wanted to get out and walk. I wished I could
carry myself. All the way these poor, starved creatures made animal
noises, "Aah-huh, aah-huh," nasal, interminable, varying the tone but
slightly ; even their words sounded like grunts to me.

China was not yet past the story-telling age, as you saw in the
theater, where someone recited the news from the stage ; for a copper
anybody could hear what was going on in the world. The ancient
classical forms of the Chinese language were intelligible to scholars
alone, and Dr. Hu-Shih had been instrumental in devising a literary
vernacular which the people could use. This philosopher who at three
years old had been familiar with eight hundred characters, now in
1922, while only in his late twenties, was already reputed to be the
initiator of the Chinese Renaissance. He asked whether I would speak
to the students of the Peking National University and, though he
was to act as chairman, volunteered also to interpret, which I esteemed
an almost unheard-of honor. His outlook, coinciding with mine, rec-
ognized what birth control might mean for civilization.

Dr. Tsai Yuen-Pei, the Chancellor of the University and a leader
of the anti-Christian movement, had gathered into his fold the most
brilliant students of Young China, all of them bubbling over with

ANCIENTS OF THE EARTH 341

interest at Western ideas, which were sweeping the globe. A great
turmoil was going on in their lives and a revolt against rigid Chinese
tradition.

Due to the translation difficulties I had encountered in Japan, I
had decided I could not afford to speak in China unless I went over
the subject first with my interpreter and knew he understood the
spirit as well as the words. Therefore I showed Dr. Hu-Shih my
lecture material in advance. He suggested, "These students will want
to know everything about contraception as it is practiced."}

"But I've never given that except at medical meetings."

"China is different from the West. Here you may discuss contra-
ception as an educational fact as well as a social measure. You will be
listened to respectfully, laughed at if you do not, and will surely be
asked for definite information. I think you should prepare yourself
for this."

It was not simple to digress from principles and theories and go
into methods that needed diagrams and technical knowledge to se-
cure understanding, and I felt diffident about following his advice.
But these young people, responsive and alert, received my first prac-
tical lecture with earnest attention. Dr. Hu-Shih translated accurately
and quickly, interjecting amusing stories and improving, I imagine,
upon my own words.

Afterwards he and I were escorted across the campus to the home
of Dr. Tsai. I have always been interested in foreign foods. I like
to try them out, and have brought home dozens of Hawaiian, Chi-
nese, Indian, Japanese recipes which can be made at home. This
dinner was an Arabian Nights experience. It began at seven and
lasted until one in the morning — bird's-nest and quail egg soup, fried
garoupa, ducks' tongues and snow fungus, roast pheasant, rice and
congee, lotus nuts and pastry, sharks' fins, and various kinds of wine.

There must have been well over thirty guests invited for the eve-
ning, among them an American woman, Mrs. Grover Clark, whose
husband was on the faculty of the University. Some of the students
had been to her between the lecture and dinner time and given her
the transcribed notes which they had taken down in shorthand.
Would she correct them? They wanted to get the information pub-
lished. When they came to the Chancellor's home to call for them so

342 MARGARET SANGER

that they could deliver them to the press, I could see at a glance that
this was not at all what I desired to leave behind me; my spoken
words never sound adequate or complete in print. Therefore, I sent
a boy to the hotel for a copy of the old stand-by,; Family Limitation.
The students set to work at once to translate it. Mrs. Clark offered to
pay the expenses, and the next afternoon five thousand copies were
ready for circulation.

This little incident was significant of Young China; an idea to
them was useless if only in the head. Their motto was to put it into
concrete reality.

Symptomatic also of new China was the abandonment of bound
feet, although women of advanced years still were to be seen leaning
on each other for support as they tottered by. Amahs were carrying
nurselings about when they themselves seemed scarcely able to stand
up. However, I was glad to see only a few of the small children had
these lily feet. Fathers realized their daughters could not earn a liv-
ing if thus deformed. At the Peking Union Medical College, com-
bining the modern equipment of the Occident with the artistry and
traditions of the Orient, no girl was accepted for training unless her
feet were normal.

One day Dr. Hu-Shih asked me to lunch in an old Manchu restau-
rant where his friends were accustomed to gather and ponder. Many
were business or professional men, but all, with their little beards and
intellectual faces, had the appearance of professors. It was an unusual
combination of Wall Street and university. In our private dining
room were seven English-speaking Chinese with families of from
four to nine children. Each said the later ones had not been wanted ;
nevertheless they had come.

The conversation took a scientific turn. Since man had through
breeding brought about such changes in the animal and vegetable
kingdoms, why could he not produce a class of human beings unable
to procreate? Was there any reason why the particular biological
factors that made the mule sterile could not be applied further ? They
discussed the interesting possibility of creating a neuter gender such
as the workers in a beehive or ant hill.

The implications of this colloquy formed a fascinating climax to
our sojourn in Peking. Our train was the last one south for several

ANCIENTS OF THE EARTH 343

days. Soldiers cluttered the landscape — not alert or even military-
looking, but men or boys put into uniform and told how to act. The
Tuchuns were all trying to "unite" China, each in his own way. We
read in the papers about the war clouds hanging over the country,
but nobody seemed to be excited. We were not worried; being for-
eigners, we were assured, meant protection.

The valley of the Yangtze Kiang was green and luxuriant ; every
inch of ground was being utilized. Even space which should have
been employed for roads was given over to food production, and
thousands of people were born, lived, and died in boats on the river.
Some water buffalo waded in the mud of the rice fields, some horses
worked the water treadmills, but human labor predominated. Over-
population and destitution went hand in hand. In this land which
Marco Polo once described as "a pleasant haven of silks, spices, and
fine manners," all the hypothetical Malthusian bogeys had come true.

Foreigners at the International and French Settlements of Shang-
hai enjoyed much the same life as at home. Their hotels were the
same, they met the same sort of people, dressed in the same clothes,
ate the same meals ; in fact, it was difficult to get Chinese food unless
you knew exactly where to go. They came in droves, herded together,
most of them bored to death. You could see they had appropriated
the best of everything — the houses with gardens and walls, the clean
rickshas, the well-fed boys, the prosperity. The Chinese, in their own
country, lived on what was left, which was practically nothing. They
huddled wistfully on the fringes — horrible, abject, dirty.

It amazed me to see that Americans, French, and English could be
so near and yet close their eyes to the wretched, degrading conditions
of devastating squalor in the native quarters. Once while a mis-
sionary was guiding me through the Chinese City, we noted a crowd,
children included, gathered in curiosity around a leper woman. She
was on the ground, sighing and breathing heavily. Nobody offered to
help her. "Maybe she's dying," said my companion. Just then the
woman gave a fearful groan and took a baby from under her rags.
She knew what to do, manipulated her thighs and abdomen, got the
afterbirth, bit the cord with her teeth, put the baby aside, turned over,
and rested. No trace of emotion showed on the faces of the watchers.

In their respective countries Europeans would have made an effort

344 MARGARET SANGER

to improve such conditions. But here they seemed to have lost many
of their former standards and qualities of character and conscience.
It was said that China, psychologically speaking, swallowed up the
morals of all those who came to reside there.

One young American secretary related to me the joys of living
in this section of the Orient. She said her salary was far smaller than
any she would have received in the United States, but her comfort,
on the other hand, far exceeded what she could have had in Boston
at double her present wages. Among them she mentioned her ricksha
boy, who cost her only five dollars a month, out of which he had to
support himself and his enormous family. During the three years he
had been working for her she had never raised his pay, nor did she
ever expect to. He dared make no request, because in China it was
almost impossible to get a job by one's self. When a servant was dis-
missed he faced practical starvation. I really formed a bad impression
of people who wanted to live in China because of the cheapness of
its luxuries.

The Grand Hotel was elegantly appointed, but the boys who
served in the rooms did not seem friendly in their hearts towards any
foreigners. Hostility was percolating throughout the country. Deep
in the Chinese mind lay the memory of many invasions, of the Boxer
Rebellion, and the intrusion of business men and, particularly, mis-
sionaries.

In Shanghai the American missionaries dominated Chinese educa-
tion, such as it was. I was surprised to find families of eight or ten
children the rule rather than the exception among them. Their sal-
aries were raised with each new infant, and that may have been the
reason. Nevertheless, there were many who wanted birth control in-
formation. When they learned of my presence they called on the tele-
phone, sent cards, came to see me. But, apparently apprehensive of
criticism, they took me if possible into a secluded room or, if we had
to meet in a public place, backed me into a corner and stood in front
to conceal the fact they were talking with me ; they acted as though
they were turning up their coat collars so that they should not be
recognized.

The only method of family limitation known to the poor Chinese
was infanticide of girl babies by suffocation or drowning. The mis-

ANCIENTS OF THE EARTH 345

sionaries were co-operating with the Government, which had enacted
a law forbidding the practice. They went from home to home to see
whether any woman were pregnant. If one were obviously so, her
name was jotted down in a notebook for a call soon after birth was
due. At the same time both father and mother were informed of the
severe penalty they would incur unless the baby itself or a doctor's
certificate of death from natural causes were produced. After two
years' work ninety-five percent of pregnant mothers showed either
their babies or good reasons for not doing so.

But the Chinese had so low a margin of subsistence that, if the
law forbade them to dispose of one child, another was starved out.
Sometimes two little girls had to be sold to keep one boy alive;
in dire necessity even he might have to be parted with to some sonless
man who wanted to ensure ancestor worship. Because the elder girls
could begin to help in the fields or become servants in some rich
landowner's household, usually it was the three- and four-year-olds
who were turned over to brothels. There they stayed until mature
enough to be set to working out their indenture. If they ever tried
unsuccessfully to find freedom, the proprietors might beat them un-
mercifully, sometimes even breaking their legs so that they could not
walk, much less ever run away again.

When infanticide was stopped, the corresponding increase in sing-
song girls making their living by prostitution was almost immediately
evident. \ It was estimated Shanghai had a hundred thousand. Many
were Eurasians, the results of unions with white men who were in
Shanghai on small salaries as representatives of foreign business
firms. I glimpsed some of the Chinese women who had been bought
as housekeepers and mistresses as well saying good-by at the train to
their American or English masters summoned home.

Desiring to see the worst of the city I went to the prostitute quar-
ter in company with Mr. Blackstone, a missionary from the Door of
Hope, a house of refuge for escaping girls. In Shanghai, as in Tokyo,
we found in the Japanese section soft, low lights and an undercurrent
of music in the air. The inmates were fully grown, gay and hearty,
the interiors were immaculate and restrained in their decoration, the
streets were swarming with sailors who apparently preferred this
district to the depressingly dark and gloomy Chinese one near by.

346 MARGARET SANGER

Here and there the Chinese prostitutes could be seen through the
open doorways, heavily rouged, gowned in vivid colors, limned like
posters against the meanness of the background, their frail, slight
bodies at the service of anyone who came. Each took her turn upon a
stool outside, using her few words of English to attract the sailor
trade. I thought I would never recover from the shock of seeing
American men spending their evenings at such places with what were
obviously children.

In one house we found half a dozen girls looking much younger
than their theoretical fifteen seated on hard benches around a room
not more than six feet by nine. A little one holding high a lamp so
that we should not trip and fall, escorted us to her cubicle, which
had only a bed for furniture. A chair was brought in for me.

Mr. Blackstone began to talk to her in her own dialect. Why had
she come?

"Too much baby home — no chow." She said she was sixteen and
had been there since she was twelve.

"Why she can't be a day over ten," I expostulated.

The child was visibly frightened, aghast at her own loquacity. We
might be from the Government. When we had at last gained her
confidence, however, she responded eagerly to this unusual sympa-
thetic contact, talking freely about herself — the long time it took to
pay herself out, the precariousness and physical fatigue of her call-
ing ; some days she had no visitors, but when a ship was in maybe as
many as ten or twelve a night. She seemed as old as the ages in her
knowledgeableness ; "No want baby," she told us. Yet her poor little
frame had the immaturity of fruit picked green and left to shrivel.

We gave her money and left in spite of her urgent and kind invi-
tation to stay.

All sing-song girls were not necessarily prostitutes; most hotels
hired them to entertain guests. Only their lips were made up, their
faces remaining pale. They wore flowers in their hair and although
not so soft-voiced as the geisha had greater independence. Certainly
their weird, shrill songs accompanied by the tinkle of a lute were
not attractive to Western ears.

Echoes of my visit to Japan had permeated throughout the colony
of Japanese, who aimed to give me an extra-cordial welcome, trying

ANCIENTS OF THE EARTH 347

their best to make up for what they thought had been an unpleasant
experience in their country. I had not realized the power of ancient
feudalism over the Japanese woman until I met her away from home,
where she blossomed into an intelligent, outspoken human being. I
noticed she expressed herself much more frankly in the presence of
men, but underneath the conversation I often sensed a propaganda
which had resulted in deep prejudice; from the horrible stories you
heard of the savagery of the Chinese you received the impression all
were cannibals.

Since my plans to include China in my itinerary had been made so
late, I had few letters of introduction there. Consequently, to my re-
gret I did not see many Chinese women. I had not expected to do much
speaking and had had very little press in Peking. Dr. Hu-Shih, how-
ever, had arranged for me to meet about fifteen newspaper men and
women in Shanghai. We sipped our tea, nibbled our cakes, and then
they began to ask questions, taking down the answers with the utmost
care. They wanted to set forth the pros and cons of birth control in
their own vernacular, but unfortunately could not reach the illiterate
masses. They asked me to speak at the Family Reformation Associa-
tion, an organization which was under missionary auspices. The rules
were no smoking, no drinking, no gambling. Its membership, there-
fore, remained small.

The young woman who interpreted paragraph by paragraph had
just returned from America, but did not prove the expert her traveling
had indicated. The chairman said I was to give both theory and prac-
tice, but when I came to the latter my translator's courage took flight
entirely. She whispered, "I'll get a doctor to say that." I gave up and
switched to something simpler. My audience, however, knew without
her assistance what I had been trying to convey, and was much di-
verted by her predicament.

Of all lands China needed knowledge of how to control her num-
bers ; the incessant fertility of her millions spread like a plague. Well-
wishing foreigners who had gone there with their own moral codes to
save her babies from infanticide, her people from pestilence, had
actually increased her problem. To contribute to famine funds and the
support of missions was like trying to sweep back the sea with a broom.

China represented the final act in an international tragedy of over-

348 MARGARET SANGER

population, seeming to prove that the eminence of a country could not
be measured by numbers any more than by industrial expansion, large
standing armies, or invincible navies. If its sons and daughters left for
the generations to come a record of immortal poetry, art, and philoso-
phy, then it was a great nation and had attained the only immortality
worth striving for. But China, once the fountainhead of wisdom, had
been brought to the dust by superabundant breeding.

This was my conclusion when at last we were back again in the
modern age on the American ship Silver State bound for Hong Kong ;
we had comfort, hot water, baths, heard the softness of the little chimes
as the steward went through the corridors announcing meals. It was
almost with a sense of awe that I asked for any service. After being
some time in the Orient you were a bit embarrassed by having an
American wait on you. Soon, however, the plumbers, the carpenters,
the painters who kept the vessel trim, the sailors who swabbed down
the decks at night, gave me a feeling that in the Western countries we
had gone far towards dignifying manual labor.

Chapter Twenty-eight

THE WORLD IS MUCH THE SAME EVERYWHERE

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A FAVORITE sales promotion method of astrologers is to send
partial readings to people whose names appear in the papers, in
the hope of piquing their curiosity to the point of demanding fuller
details regarding their future lives and conduct. From time to time
I used to receive these and paid no attention. But just before I had
sailed from California a friend of birth control had sent me one based
upon arrests and prison. This forecast told me I would have a great
deal of difficulty in starting, and that on a certain day in May the
same signs would prevail over my House as at the Town Hall Meeting
— that I should, therefore, be prepared for police interference.

While packing in Shanghai I was looking through my briefcase
and happened to note that the date was one on which the Silver State
would still be at sea ; she was not due at Hong Kong until the next day.
I laughed to myself and said, "Here's where I prove it wrong." As it
turned out, however, the ship was ahead of her schedule and arrived
in Hong Kong twelve hours early.

We were steaming up the long reach towards the Kowloon piers
when, to my utter surprise, the immigration officer who had come on
board handed me a notice instructing me to visit the Chief of Police.

"Is this a special invitation for me, or is everybody included?"

"Only for you, Madam," was the smiling response.

The harbor was crowded with junks and fishing boats. Children in

349

350 MARGARET SANGER

sampans were holding out nets for whatever might come overside,
fishing up each bit of refuse from the water. Adjoining ships were
being coaled by women coolies, hundreds of them, their faces strained
and bodies stringy as though made up entirely of tendons. They carried
their two baskets on bamboo poles across their shoulders, and clam-
bered like ants in their bare feet over the barges — not singing as the
men coolies of the North, but making much wallah-wallah — jabbering
and shouting.

After settling Grant in a hotel I took a chair from around the corner,
because police headquarters was part way up the Peak, and rickshas
could not negotiate the steep ascent. The Chief was not there. I in-
quired whether anything were wrong with my passport. Since my
British visa was perfectly correct, they said there must be some mis-
take ; they had no information about any summons. I left my card.

The next day the Chief called at my hotel but we missed each other
because I was out with Grant ordering his first pair of long trousers.
When I returned I found a calling card and another request to come
to headquarters that afternoon. Again I obeyed, and again I found
no Chief and no message for me. I left another card and the officials
whom I had seen before laughingly reiterated they still knew of no
complaints.

"Well, I'm going tomorrow morning. If the Chief wants anything
he'll have to come to the hotel." He never did.

Once more we were off, this time on a British liner. The sea was
smooth, the air cool. It was the ideal ocean voyage I had always longed
for. I was relaxed and enervated but it was good to be so. I had nothing
to do all day but sit in the glorious breezes on deck and watch the
romping children, about fifty of whom were on board. Many had been
born in the Orient and were accompanying "pater" who was going
home on leave. One little boy might come tearing by pursued by an-
other, both followed by anxious Chinese amahs, thin, dark, slick-
haired, wearing glossy, black trousers and coats buttoned down the
side. They seemed in constant distress over the antics of their ener-
getic charges.

When we dropped anchor at Singapore, agitation and excitement
were again manifest among the inspectors at the sight of my passport.
I was politely asked to stand by while they consulted, and then was

THE WORLD IS MUCH THE SAME EVERYWHERE 35 1

ushered off the ship to an upstairs office where I was questioned by a
pleasant young Englishman as to my intentions in going to India.

"But I'm not planning to stop in India."

"Lectures by you are announced in Bombay and Calcutta."

"This is the first I've heard of it," I assured him. "But if I were to
go, would there be any objection?"

"That would depend on the subject of your lectures."

"I'm interested in only one subject."

He pressed a button. Miraculously, almost like a scene from a mys-
tery play, and as though everything had been rehearsed in advance, an
attendant entered and placed on the desk a large, closely typewritten
paper.

"Am I on the blacklist?"

"Not exactly, but you said you were interested in only one subject.
Then what about this ?" He actually read me from that document de-
tails of a small reception I had given five years before in my own
apartment in New York for Agnes Smedley after her release on bail.

For a moment I was speechless with amazement. Then I ejaculated,
"Why shouldn't I be interested when she was arrested for a cause that
is my own? Besides, you must remember the charge was later dis-
missed."

"Then what about serving on the Committee for the Debs Defence
and for the Political Prisoners Defence ?" He mentioned other gather-
ings I had attended during that parlor meeting era, such as when
Mary Knoblauch had had Jim Larkin talk on Irish Home Rule or
Lajpat Rai, the Indian sociologist, express anti-British tendencies.
Wherever my name had appeared on the stationery of any committee
he had it on his record. My public life was there spread out, showing
how careful was British espionage.

I brought forth from my arsenal some of my most trusty arguments,
and the official ultimately agreed that if the vast millions of India
wanted birth control he was all for my going there and would visa my
passport. However, since I did not propose to include it in my trip the
discussion was purely academic.

Although Singapore when we reached it seemed to combine so many
nationalities that it was like Europe, America, and the Orient all mixed
together, Malays, whose land it once had been, appeared to be in the

352 MARGARET SANGER

minority and their dialect little used. I could not escape that fatal horo-
scope, because when their language was described to me as easy and
simple, the example given was mata. By itself it meant eye. But, mata
mata, in addition to being the plural, also meant policemen, who were
the eyes of the government, and mata mata glap meant secret eyes,'
hence detectives.

How Europeans made themselves understood in Singapore was a
wonder to me. The Chinese ricksha boys apparently comprehended no
tongue, nor knew where any place was. You stepped into a ricksha and
pointed to where you thought your hotel was, praying your finger was
extended in the right direction. If you did not point he ran in any
direction of the compass. Even so, at the first corner he was inclined
to turn into a more shady street. After a while, since he seemed to be
arriving nowhere, you spoke to him sharply and he pulled up to a traffic
officer, who told him where to go. Still pointing and saying "hotel"
loudly, you eventually were delivered in front of the door by a
much pleased coolie, grinning from ear to ear at his own cleverness.
The poor fellows were so cheerful and willing that you could not help
smiling, too.

The weather continued balmy to Penang, to Ceylon, to Aden. I had
been dreading the heat of the Red Sea, but the passage was surpris-
ingly cool ; the facing wind was really enjoyable.

At Cairo, where we made a longer pause, Grant came down with
dysentery and his temperature shot to a hundred and four degrees. A
Czechoslovakian doctor spent three nights with him but could not
reduce the fever. Each morning when I rose early to act as nurse, I
stumbled over about six natives, our own guide Ali among them, kneel-
ing on prayer rugs in front of his door. All the fortune tellers had said
a death was pending in Shepheard's Hotel and were assuming he would
be the victim. The fourth day, after the doctor had gone to his office,
I ordered a dish pan full of ice and sponged Grant off with the frosty
water. Two hours later his temperature was normal and he began to
show signs of recovering. I never divulged that cold bath to the doctor.

Ali was a handsome, dark-faced Arab with large luminous eyes and
fine-cut features which made American ones seem crude and weak in
comparison. Wearing his long black robe to the ground and topped
by a red fez, he used to come to his duties bearing great armfuls of

THE WORLD IS MUCH THE SAME EVERYWHERE 353

flowers from his mother. We held lengthy conversations. "Have you
been married ?" I asked.

"Yes, five times."

"Weren't any of them happy ?"

He began enumerating. The first one had been young and inexperi-
enced ; she had not been properly brought up and did not know her
position as his wife. Although she had cost him a hundred dollars, he
had dispatched her to her parents because she was too independent.
Number two had not been clean and had been too old for his mother to
train; he had made amicable arrangements with her father for her
return, and had lost no money on this transaction. Number three had
been sickly, and a great expense ; she also had gone back. Number four
had not loved him ; it had been shortly evident her heart was with an-
other man and the agreement had been broken by mutual consent.
Number five, the latest, he had sent home because she would not wait
on his mother.

"Why should she?"

"Madam, my mother carried me in her belly for nine months. Should
I have a wife who would not work for her after that ?"

He was now casting about for his sixth.

AH haunted our footsteps and, in order to collect his five percent
commission on all our purchases, noted every place we went. Merchants
made a social affair of their customers' calls. You went to a perfume
shop in the Bazaar. The proprietor said, "Yes," sat down, and handed
you a gold-tipped, aromatic cigarette. He lighted it for you, took out a
pile of letters from a bag, and opened them for your inspection. They
were testimonials that a certain gentleman had sent similar cigarettes
to Hartford, Connecticut, or Pelham, New York. Of course, you
bought some. Then a cup of Persian tea was brought you, and you
wanted some of that. At last you recalled that you had come for attar
of roses. By this time he had sensed your "aura" and knew what you
could pay. He was willing humbly to mention the price.

Our tour had been a wonderful experience for Grant. He had studied
the Baedekers, planned our trips when we were coming to a new city
or country, looked into their histories and, although he was only thir-
teen, shown a highly awake and intelligent attitude towards every-
thing we had seen.

354 MARGARET SANGER

He had had all sorts of wares hurled at him — ostrich feathers, fans,
baskets, sapphires, scarabs. He was satiated with strange sights and
lore — Buddha's Temple of the Tooth at Kandy, caravans of bullocks,
the English club at tiny Port Swettenham in Malaya, the enormous
porters of Egypt who picked up trunks as though they were handbags,
women veiled and women unveiled, mosques, the Coptic church where
Joseph and Mary were supposed to have hidden Jesus from Herod,
the date trees along the road to Memphis, the underground Temple of
the Bull, the remains of an old proud world at Alexandria where Cleo-
patra had once held court, the primitive ferry-raft on which we had
crossed the Nile to see the place where Moses had been found in the
bullrushes, the wonderful ride, weird and lovely, across the Sahara to
view the Pyramids and Sphinx. On his way to Switzerland he had
traveled by gondola along the canals of Venice, had been trailed
through the art galleries of Milan.

After a few weeks at Montreux Grant was fully recovered, but he
was now homesick for the first time since we had left New York eight
months before. All he wanted was to see Tilden play in the tennis
matches at Wimbledon, and then go home. Because I did not think he
should miss the reception which H.G. was giving, I had him fly across
the Channel to London, and afterwards, appreciating his longing to be
among his own age and kind, I shipped him off on the maiden voyage
of the Majestic to a camp in the Poconos. By the time he was back at
Peddie he was up with his class, his mind vastly enriched, and able to
approach his studies in a more mature manner. I have never regretted
taking him with me.

I myself remained in London for the Fifth International Neo-
Malthusian and Birth Control Conference to be held July 11-14. The
inclusion of the words birth control was a definite concession on the
part of the Neo-Malthusians to the new trend of thought. It was a-
delight to be amid conditions where tolerance reigned and the atmos-
phere was unblighted by legal restrictions. The scientific candor of the
discussion was reported in the newspapers with sincerity and sobriety.

John Maynard Keynes, who had become famous almost overnight
as the result of his book, The Consequences of the Peace, presided at
one of the afternoon meetings. Later, I had lunch with him. He was
tall and well-built, with clear, cold, blue eyes, a fine shapely head, brow,

THE WORLD IS MUCH THE SAME EVERYWHERE 355

and face, a brilliant bearing and brilliant intellect. I was impressed by
the fact he did not smile. Because he gave each question of yours so
much consideration, he seemed constantly perplexed, but when he once
started to talk you knew he had already put aside the thing as having
been solved, and gone on in advance. You were probably more puzzled
at his next question than he at yours.

In the two years that elapsed before I saw Keynes again he had
married Lydia Lopokouva of the Russian Ballet. He had become an
entirely different person — his serious mien and countenance had been
changed to a buoyant, joyous happiness. His knowledge of the prob-
lems of money, population, and economics were of a nature far above
the grasp of an ordinary intelligence, yet in his conversation with his
wife he always implied she knew the subject as thoroughly as he, and
answered her queries as though their minds were together. He was
the only Englishman, perhaps the only man, I ever knew to do this.

Unlike Lydia Lopokouva, most women had a strenuous battle try-
ing to prove themselves equal to men ; this marriage conflict was in-
separable from modern life. I could sense it frequently when coming in
contact with a married couple — on her part the years of rebellion, and
on his of trying to put her down as a weakling.

Sentiment has extolled the young love which promises to last
through eternity. But love is a growth mingled with a succession of
experiences ; it is as foolish to promise to love forever as to promise
to live forever.

To every woman there comes the apprehension that marriage may
not fulfill her highest expectations and dreams. If in the heart of a
girl entering this covenant for the first time there are doubts, even in
the slightest degree, they are doubled and trebled in their intensity
when she meditates a second marriage.

J. Noah H. Slee, whom I had known for some time, was what the
papers called "a staid pillar of finance." He was South African born
but had made his fortune in the United States. In customs and exteriors
we were as far apart as the poles ; he was a conservative in politics and
a churchman, whereas I voted for Norman Thomas and, instead of
attending orthodox services, preferred to go to the opera.

An old-fashioned type of man, J.N. yearned to protect any type of
woman who would cling. Complications, therefore, confronted us. I

356 MARGARET SANGER

had been free for nearly ten years, and, for as long, had been waging a
campaign to free other women. I was startled by the thought of join-
ing my life to that of one who objected to his wife's coming home alone
in a taxi at night, or assumed she could not buy her own railroad
- tickets or check her baggage. Nevertheless, despite his foibles, he was
generous in wanting me to continue my unfinished work, and was
undeterred by my warning that he would always have to be kissing me
good-by in depots or waving farewell as the gangplank went up.

I had to consider also that I had two boys to be educated, and that
children were much more to a woman than to a man. Yet I knew he
would be kind and understanding with them. Furthermore, he had
faith both in individuals and in humanity; his naive appearance of
hardness was actually not borne out in fact. He kept his promises and
hated debts ; we attached the same importance to the spirit of integrity.

Hundreds of people who scarcely knew me were delighted when the
news of our marriage eventually became public. Within one week
letters began to arrive from all over the United States and Canada. One
man wrote he had helped me get up a meeting at San Francisco and
now needed a printing press — would I mail him the trifling sum of
three thousand dollars ? Another brought to mind I had had dinner at
his home when lecturing in his city, and now that he had painted
enough pictures to hold an exhibit, would I finance it? Dozens of
ministers, old men, old ladies, writers, sculptors wanted me to set them
up in business, musical concert work, bookshops, recalling the time
they had taken me in cars to meetings, or that I had slept in their beds.
Parents requested me to send their children to schools, to Europe, to
sanatoriums — heaven knows what. I never knew people could need so
much. I longed with all the desire in me to make out a check for every
lack and wave a magic wand and say, "So be it."

But all I could do was write back that I had no more wealth than
before — my husband's was his own. And I still required as many
contributions to birth control as ever.

I had not wanted the worry or trouble of handling money, nor do I
want it today. The things I valued then I value now, not for what they
cost, but for what they are. To me dollars and cents are only messen-
gers to do my bidding, and nothing more. To use them properly and
get results is my responsibility.

THE WORLD IS MUCH THE SAME EVERYWHERE 357

When I asked J.N., "Why do you lock things up?" he replied, "I
always do, don't you?"

"Never. I haven't anything worth locking up."

That is the way I still feel.

It seemed so final when again I started a home, but there had been
a gathering loneliness in my life — not seeing the children except on
holidays, never having time to spend with old friends or to make new
ones, and with such rich opportunities constantly offering themselves.
I knew very well, however, what sort of a house I wanted — a simple
one, something like Shelley's in Sussex.

In 1923, with stones gathered from the fields we built a house near __
Fishkill, New York, cradled in the Dutchess County hills, beside a little
lake. On it we tried out swans, but they did not work ; although they
looked picturesque, they were too messy. So we changed to ducks and
stocked the water with bass. I planned a blue garden which grew up
and down and threw itself about the house and altered with the sea-
sons. Pepper, a cocker spaniel puppy of two months, came the first
year and bounced and leaped around us as we walked through the
woods or rode horseback over the hills.

Willow Lake was only sixty miles from New York. I could make out "
the menus for a week ahead, leave directions for the gardening, be
in my office fairly early and back again for dinner at night. Later, for
working purposes, we built a studio among the treetops on the edge of
a cliff from which I could look far off across the majestic valley of the
Hudson.

Domesticity, which I had once so scorned, had its charms after all. -

Chapter Twenty-nine

WHILE THE DOCTORS CONSULT

/A FTER coming back from around the world I found nothing had
jtxbeen done about the Tenth Street clinic, which I had expected to
be in operation. No members of the Academy of Medicine had come
forth to back Dr. de Vilbiss, and I had paid the rent for the last twelve
months while vainly waiting.

Now I gave it up and decided to start afresh. The more I had
studied, the more clearly I had recognized that it was not possible to
advise a standard contraceptive for all women any more than it was
possible to prescribe one set of eyeglasses for all conditions of sight.
Only upon examination and careful check-up could you determine the
most suitable method. No detailed statistics had ever been kept except
at Brownsville, and those case histories had never been returned to me
by the police. I wanted to collect at least a thousand such records for a
scientific survey before any opposition could interfere with the plan.

Many women were still coming to me personally for information
at 104 Fifth Avenue. The best thing to do was have a woman doctor
right there to take care of them — a quiet way to begin. It was hard
to locate one foot-loose and free; I could have no shying or run-
ning off at the first indication of trouble. In making inquiries I heard
of Dr. Dorothy Bocker, who held a New York City license though she
was at present in the Public Health Service of Georgia. This single,
cordial, and enthusiastic young woman knew practically nothing about
birth control technique, but was willing to learn. The difficulty was that
she wanted five thousand dollars a year. ,

358

WHILE THE DOCTORS CONSULT 359

At first this appeared an almost unsurmountable obstacle. Here was
just the person I had been looking for, but it seemed beyond my power
to raise so large a sum. I was loaded with the financial weight of the
Review and the League. That organization had been admitted as a
membership corporation and hence could not secure a license to con-
duct a clinic, which in New York was synonymous with a dispensary.
No clinic, therefore, could be included in its budget; it would remain
a department of the League by courtesy only, being actually my private
undertaking. Where could I find someone to donate such an enormous
amount?

Then I remembered Clinton Chance, a young manufacturer of
Birmingham, who had prospered exceedingly both before and during
the War. He and his wife, Janet, had become good friends of mine
during my 1920 visit to England. Having felt the need of a more
sound and fundamental outlet for his riches than that provided by
charity, he had come to see that birth control information was far
better for his employees than a dole at the birth of every new baby. He
was not in any sense a professional philanthropist, but only wanted to
help them be self-sufficient.

Clinton had once offered me money to set the birth control move-
ment going in England, but I had refused then because England
had enough co-workers, who were handling the situation well, and,
furthermore, my place was in the United States. He had then said
to me, "I won't give you a contribution for regular current expenses,
but if ever you see the necessity for some new project which will ad-
vance the general good, call on me.";

Now I cabled Clinton at length, explaining my need. He promptly
answered, "Yes, go ahead," and soon arrived an anonymous thousand
pounds to cover Dr. Bocker's salary for the first year. I made out a
contract for two. She was to come in January, 1923, and we were to
shoulder the risks and responsibilities together.

Even to choose a name for the venture was not easy. I had been
steadily advertising the term "clinic" to America for so long that it
had become familiar and, moreover, to poor people it meant that
little or no payment was required. But the use of the word itself was
legally impossible, and I was not certain that the same might not be
true of "center" or "bureau." I wanted it at least to imply the things

360 MARGARET SANGER

that clinic meant as I had publicized it, and also to include the idea of
research.

Finally, one of the doors of the two rooms adjoining the League
offices, readily accessible to me and to the women who came for advice,
was lettered, Clinical Research.

It was still a clinic in my mind, though frankly an experiment be-
cause I was not even sure women would accept the methods we had
to offer them. We started immediately keeping the records. Dr. Bocker
wrote down the history of the case on a large card, numbering it to
correspond with a smaller one containing the patient's name and ad-
dress. Each applicant she suspected of a bad heart, tuberculosis, kidney
trouble, or any ailment which made pregnancy dangerous, she in-
formed regarding contraception and advised medical care at once.

In our first annual report, which attracted much attention, all our
cases were analyzed. We said, "Here is the proof — nine hundred
women with definite statistics concerning their ages, physical and
mental conditions, and economic status."

As time went on I became less and less pleased with Dr. Bocker's
system. She had no follow-up on patients, and I wished the clinic to be
like a business in the thoroughness of its routine. I refused to approve
methods as a hundred percent reliable until there had been not merely
one but three checks on each woman who had been to the clinic. To
begin with, she was to return two or three days after her initial visit ;
she usually did that. .But if she did not come back inside three months,
then a social worker in our own employ should be sent to call on her.
Finally, she was to be examined once a year. Dr. Bocker did not see
eye to eye with me that this was the only way to put the work on a
sound scientific basis of facts, and we agreed to part company in De-
cember of the second year.

Dr. Hannah M. Stone, a fine young woman from the Lying-In
Hospital, volunteered to take Dr. Bocker's place without salary. Her
gaze was clear and straight, her hair was black, her mouth gentle and
sweet. She had a sympathetic response to mothers in distress, and a
broad attitude towards life's many problems. When the Lying-In
Hospital later found she had connected herself with our clinic, it gave
her a choice between remaining with us and resigning from the staff.
She resigned. Her courageous stand indicated staunch friendship and

WHILE THE DOCTORS CONSULT 361

the disinterested selflessness essential for the successful operation of
the clinic. These qualities have kept her with us all this time, one oi the
most beloved and loyal workers that one could ever hope for.

The clinic could serve New York, but its practical value outside was
restricted, and I was always seeking some way of remedying this. We
took the preliminary step in Illinois, where no laws existed against
clinics. I had arranged a conference in Chicago at the Drake Hotel,
October, 1923, the first of a regional series. Mrs. Benjamin Carpenter
and Dr. Rachelle Yarros, who had been with Jane Addams at Hull
House, had to obtain a court decision before Dr. Herman Bundesen,
Commissioner of Health, would issue a license for the second clinic in
the United States.

Meanwhile, between 192 1 and 1926, 1 received over a million letters
from mothers requesting information. From 1923 on a staff of three
to seven was constantly busy just opening and answering them. Despite
the limitations of the writers and their lack of education, they revealed
themselves strangely conscious of the responsibilities of the maternal
function.

Childbearing is hazardous, even when carried out with the ad-
vantages of modern hygiene and parental care. The upper middle
classes are likely to assume all confinements are surrounded by the
same attention given the births of their own babies. They do not
comprehend it is still possible in these United States for a woman to
milk six cows at five o'clock in the morning and bring a baby into the
world at nine. The terrific hardships of the farm mother are not in the
least degree lessened by maternity. If she and her infant survive, it is
only to face these hardships anew, and with additional complications.

In the midst of an era of science and fabulous wealth reaching out
for enlightenment to advance our civilization, with millionaires tossing
their fortunes into libraries and hospitals and laboratories to discover
the secrets and causes of life, here at the doorstep of everyone was
this tragic, scarcely recognized condition.

It was an easy and even a pleasant task to reduce human problems to
numerical figures in black and white on charts and graphs, but infi-
nitely more difficult to suggest concrete solutions. The reasoning of
learned theologians and indefatigable statisticians seemed academic
and anemically intellectual if brought face to face with the actuality of

2$2 MARGARET SANGER

suffering. When they confronted me with arguments, this dim, far-off
chorus of pain began to resound anew in my ears.

Sensitive women of our clerical staff were constantly breaking down
in health under the nervous depression caused by the fact we had so
little knowledge to give. One who went to Chicago to help rehabilitate
soldiers wrote me, "I'm feeling much better. These men who have lost
a leg or arm come in, apparently disqualified forever, but something is
being done about them, and it is happy work, not forlorn like yours."

To prove that the story could be told by the mothers themselves, ten
thousand letters, with the assistance of Mary Boyd, were selected and
these again cut to five hundred. Eventually this historical record ap-
peared in book form as Motherhood in Bondage.

Whenever I am discouraged I go to those letters as to a wellspring
which sends me on reheartened. They make me realize with increasing
intensity that whoever kindles a spark of hope in the breast of another
cannot shirk the duty of keeping it alive.

[ Woman and the New Race, which sold at first for two dollars, had
a distribution of two hundred and fifty thousand copies, and it made
my heart ache to know that poor women who could ill afford it were
buying the book and not finding there what they sought. To the best of
my ability I tried to supply general information, but the only way of
extending genuine aid was to persuade doctors to give it professionally.)

By a happy chance I met Dr. James F. Cooper, tall, blond, distin-
guished, a fine combination of missionary and physician, who left no
stone unturned when a patient came to him, but devoted his whole at-
tention to her — everything in her life was important to him. He was
recently back from Fuchow, China, and was establishing himself in
Boston as a gynecologist.-^ Since he was thoroughly convinced of the
vital necessity for birth control and could talk technically to his pro-
fession and interpret to the layman as well, my husband pledged his
salary and expenses for two years, and I induced him to associate
himself with us as medical director to go forth and try to convince the
doctors throughout the country that contraceptive advice would save
a large proportion of their women patients.

In January, 1925, Dr. Cooper started on a tour which covered nearly
all the states in the Union. In the course of the two years he delivered
more than seven hundred lectures. Occasionally he was suspected of

WHILE THE DOCTORS CONSULT 363

ulterior motives, of attempting to advertise the products he recom-
mended, but this did not sway him from his persistence. Where he
found laxity on the part of medical organizations he spoke to lay asso-
ciations, which applied pressure on their own physicians, demanding
information. As a result of this trip, doctors really began to awake
to the problem of contraception, and when it was ended we had the
names of some twenty thousand from Maine to California who had
consented to instruct patients referred to them.

At this point began the huge and difficult process of decentraliza-
tion, so that the New York office need no longer be a clearing house.
Each request which lay outside the pale of the Cooper influence re-
quired voluminous correspondence. One letter, enclosing a stamped,
return-addressed envelope, was mailed to the woman, asking her to
furnish us the name of her doctor. We then wrote him to inquire
whether he would give her information, and offered to send supplies
if she could not afford them. If he said yes, we notified her to that
effect; if he said no, we gave some other doctor in her vicinity an
opportunity to co-operate.

We were immediately confronted with the situation that even will-
ing doctors had little to recommend. Literally thousands of women re-
ported that such ineffective methods had been tendered them they had
refused to pay. We ourselves did not have a great deal, and this put
us in a weak position; the acceptance of the theory was ahea4 of the
means of practicing it.

The jelly I had found in Friedrichshaven had turned out to be too
expensive, because it was made with a chinosol and Irish moss base,
and the price of the former was prohibitive in preparing it for poor
women. Dr. Stone and Dr. Cooper, therefore, devised a formula for a
jelly with a lactic acid and glycerine base, which was within our means.
Most of their cases, however, were sufficiently grave for them not to
feel justified in using it alone experimentally. Consequently, they took
the precaution of having a double safeguard by combining the chemical
contraceptive with the mechanical — jelly with pessary — which proved
ninety-eight percent efficacious.

At this time we could not import diaphragms directly. Although I
had given various friends going to Germany and England the mission
of bringing them in, this could not be done in sufficient quantity.;,

364 MARGARET SANGER

Furthermore, since bootlegging supplies could not continue indefi-
nitely I had to find out how they could legally be made here.

Two young men came to help in whatever way was most necessary.
Herbert Simonds, who had been in advertising, began to investigate
the possibility that some recognized rubber company should make our
supplies. When one and all were fearful, he and Guy Moyston, who did
some publicity for us, concluded they would form the Holland-Rantos
Company, selling only to physicians or on prescription. They spent
their own time and thousands of dollars personally on research, in the
end perfecting a quality of rubber that could stand the variations of
climate in the United States — hot houses and cold winters, Florida
dampness and Western dryness.

Meanwhile, Julius Schmid, an old established manufacturer, had
been importing from his own concern in Germany a few diaphragms,
but only on a modest scale because he did not want to run afoul of the
Comstock law. As soon as he saw a potential market in the medical
profession he fetched from the Fatherland several families who had
been making molds there, gave them places to live in, and set up a little
center, expanding gradually until eventually he sold more contracep-
tive supplies than any firm in the world.

But this was all in the future.

Soon after we had developed an organization in which econo-
mists, biologists, and other scientists could be articulate, they came
into the movement. Dr. S. Adolphus Knopf, a tuberculosis specialist,
who had been one of the first to greet me when I came out of jail, never
missed an opportunity to contribute articles to medical journals and to
write letters. Professor Edward Alsworth Ross's books continued to
popularize the sociological and economic aspects. Professor E. M.
East of the Bussy Institute of Harvard University published a study
of population titled Mankind at the Crossroads, which obtained wide
circulation. His one-time pupil, Dr. Raymond Pearl of Johns Hopkins,
was carrying on the same work showing exactly how much food a cer-
tain number of acres could produce at what cost. Universities generally
began to show an interest; students wrote asking for scientific and
historical data upon which to base their theses.

Young people in colleges, partly because their ideas were not yet

WHILE THE DOCTORS CONSULT 365

biased, offered a fallow field for my personal campaign of education
through lecturing. I particularly enjoyed their quickness and alertness
and their interludes of comic relief. Nowhere has this combination
been more apparent than in a recent visit to Colgate University. Four
boys met me at the station and somehow or other we all squeezed into
an automobile which shortly deposited me at the home of one of the
professors for tea and to meet the faculty. "This is house-party night,"
he told me. "The girls are here, and most of the boys won't get to bed
until daylight. We'll have to rout them out to hear you at chapel to-
morrow." He added that during his twelve years in the University no
woman had spoken on that platform.

"Have they prejudices against women speakers ?"

"Oh, no, no. There's just no subject a woman can deal with better
than a man."

Well ! I thought, if the boys will all have been out to parties and
I'm the first woman speaker, here is a challenge ! No sociology or dull
population figures for them from me.

The next morning, determined to make them take notice, I ran-
sacked my bag for my smartest dress, adjusted my lipstick, and care-
fully set my hat at an angle. Nevertheless, I was a bit ill at ease. My
anxiety was not allayed when Norman Himes, professor of sociology,
said, "Now, Mrs. Sanger, we probably shan't be able to hear you in
this hall. The acoustics are very bad. They can hardly hear me and I
have a big voice."

This was even less encouraging. I felt I was likely to be the last as
well as the first woman at Colgate. However, I replied bravely, "I
can speak up and we can have some wave if they can't hear me. Any-
how, there probably won't be many; why can't they be moved up
front?"

"Yes, that's what we'd better do."

We went in to find the chapel jammed. Some of the students were
standing in the door, others against the walls.

Professor Himes introduced me at the top of his lungs. "Louder !
Louder !" The boys waved their hands. The more he tried to make him-
self heard, the more restless they became. When I stood, however, they
had to listen if they were to hear me. There was no waving, no calling.

366 MARGARET SANGER

They roared with laughter and clapped at everything I said. This
seemed fine, but I suspected that I could not have really made so pro-
found an impression as to deserve so much applause.

Someone afterwards commented to Professor Himes, "We've
never seen the boys so appreciative."

"Oh," he remarked, "they thought if they could keep Mrs. Sanger
talking long enough they wouldn't have to go to their examinations."

From the time I started lecturing in 19 16 I have appeared in many
places — halls, churches, women's clubs, homes, theaters. I have had
many types of audiences — cotton workers, churchmen, liberals, Social-
ists, scientists, clubmen, and fashionable, philanthropically minded
women.

Once in Detroit Mrs. William McGraw, Sr. had organized a public
meeting and luncheon at the Statler Hotel. When I arrived I encoun-
tered a situation which might well have embarrassed a less doughty
hostess. She had invited a dozen of the most prominent women in the
city to sit at the speaker's table. Mrs. A. had asked, "Will Mrs. B. sit
there also?" Mrs. B. had inquired, "Will Mrs. C. be next to me?"
Each wanted social support. Mrs. McGraw had blandly refused to
tell them ; consequently not one had accepted. Although five hundred
came, only two places were set at the great banquet table on the plat-
form. Mrs. McGraw and I ate in solitary splendor with nothing but
the floral decorations for company.

All the world over, in Penang and Skagway, in El Paso and Hel-
singfors, I have found women's psychology in the matter of child-
bearing essentially the same, no matter what the class, religion, or
economic status. Always to me any aroused group was a good group,
and therefore I accepted an invitation to talk to the women's branch
of the Ku Klux Klan at Silver Lake, New Jersey, one of the weirdest
experiences I had in lecturing.

My letter of instruction told me what train to take, to walk from
the station two blocks straight ahead, then two to the left. I would see
a sedan parked in front of a restaurant. If I wished I could have ten
minutes for a cup of coffee or bite to eat, because no supper would be
served later.

I obeyed orders implicitly, walked the blocks, saw the car, found
the restaurant, went in and ordered some cocoa, stayed my allotted ten

WHILE THE DOCTORS CONSULT 367

minutes, then approached the car hesitatingly and spoke to the driver.
I received no reply. She might have been totally deaf as far as I was
concerned. Mustering up my courage, I climbed in and settled back.
Without a turn of the head, a smile, or a word to let me know I was
right, she stepped on the self-starter. For fifteen minutes we wound
around the streets. It must have been towards six in the afternoon.
We took this lonely lane and that through the woods, and an hour
later pulled up in a vacant space near a body of water beside a large,
unpainted, barnish building.

My driver got out, talked with several other women, then said to me
severely, "Wait here. We will come for you." She disappeared. More
cars buzzed up the dusty road into the parking place. Occasionally men
dropped wives who walked hurriedly and silently within. This went
on mystically until night closed down and I was alone in the dark. A
few gleams came through chinks in the window curtains. Even though
it was May, I grew chillier and chillier.

After three hours I was summoned at last and entered a bright
corridor filled with wraps. As someone came out of the hall I saw
through the door dim figures parading with banners and illuminated
crosses. I waited another twenty minutes. It was warmer and I did
not mind so much. Eventually the lights were switched on, the audi-
ence seated itself, and I was escorted to the platform, was introduced,
and began to speak.

Never before had I looked into a sea of faces like these. I was sure
that if I uttered one word, such as abortion, outside the usual vocabu-
lary of these women they would go off into hysteria. And so my ad-
dress that night had to be in the most elementary terms, as though
I were trying to make children understand.

In the end, through simple illustrations I believed I had accom-
plished my purpose. A dozen invitations to speak to similar groups
were proffered. The conversation went on and on, and when we were
finally through it was too late to return to New York. Under a curfew
law everything in Silver Lake shut at nine o'clock. I could not even
send a telegram to let my family know whether I had been thrown in
the river or was being held incommunicado. It was nearly one before I
reached Trenton, and I spent the night in a hotel.

In Brattleboro, Vermont, my audience was made up of another slice

368 MARGARET SANGER

of America — honest, strong, capable housewives who made their pies
and doughnuts and preserves before they came. When I had finished
there was not a murmur of commendation from the three hundred.
The minister of the church where the meeting was held had asked me
to stand beside him to say how-do-you-do when they came out. They
just went by, eyes straight ahead.

On the telephone afterwards, however, each was asking what the
other thought. The cases I had cited were typical of their own com-
munity. "Was she referring to this one or that one?" they queried.

I returned two days later to lunch with a doctor and four or five
social workers, and was surprised to hear, "The women want to start
a clinic."

"But there wasn't any enthusiasm when I suggested it the other
morning."

"The people around here don't express much openly. They were
moved to quietness. But just the same they're starting a clinic in
Brattleboro."

Chapter Thirty

NOW IS THE TIME FOR CONVERSE

SIDE by side with the clinic and education another project had been
stirring for some time in my mind. Internationalism was in the
air, and I wanted that outlook brought into the movement in the
United States. To this end I made plans for the Sixth International
Malthusian and Birth Control Conference, to be held in New York in
March, 1925.

In the summer of 1924 I called a Conference Committee meeting
of the League. That is, in addition to the regular Board members,
other supporters were invited to attend. As soon as the matter was
brought up they expostulated, "You still have to ask for money to run
the Review. How can you pay the fares of the delegates and furnish
them with hospitality ? Do you know how much it will cost ?"

Since I wished to have the Conference important enough to make its
mark I replied promptly, "Not less than twenty-five thousand dollars."

"Have you thought of how you are going to finance it?"

"Certainly I have." I was certain that the interest of many of our
contributors extended beyond the magazine, and that they would see
we now had a broader field of activity. They had given before and
would give again. I knew money would come in.

Any five of the outside women present could have underwritten the
Conference, but they objected that funds were needed for other
work. One by one they left in a hurry; the inevitable appointments
were waiting for them. Their advice to the Board was, no Conference
— and the wealthy members of the Board concurred.

369

370 MARGARET SANGER

Nevertheless, I went ahead with the details of securing backers.
Even the letterhead on our stationery was significant. You could tell
such a lot about an organization — quality, standards, tone — from the
names, often more informative than the body of the letter. My inten-
tion was to make people stand in public for what they believed in
private, and at least our list of sponsors was impressive enough — a
brilliant and distinguished array.

The success of any conference was determined in great measure by
the caliber of the men who took part in it. Results depended first upon
the concept animating it, and second, as had been proved before, on the
presence of